Hi Garry,To ensure your safety, it is highly recommended to visit areavibes.com and select the "See more crime data" option.

There's lots of properties for sale in the Smoky mountains so you may also have a larger selection of options to purchase as well.

My recommendation would be to engage an investment property focused realtor (not a general residential realtor) and let that person guide you through the process from pre-qualification to market/property valuation and selection. 

Unfortunately, many of these companies that do property management and brokerage services include exclusivity clauses in their contracts which I don't think is right.

If I would have used competent management, the manager that I picked and vetted, then it would have cash flowed, assuming they could have filled the vacancies.The big lesson I learned is that the property manager selected can make or break a deal. 

Always looking for great deals but very selective as we don't really need to add to our portfolio at this time - but would definitely consider a great deal. 

I definitely plan on building a team in the market we select. 

As for selective screening alone, even a property manager told me “even doctors sometimes stop paying”.

I invest almost exclusively internationally but I would generally never invest in long-term rentals, unless the rentability is very high, which it almost never is.6.

To avoid going through the same poor experience, keep reading.Even if someone gives you a referral here, do NOT make the mistake of assuming that the PMC will meet your expectations, just because they met the expectations of the referral source.In our experience, the #1 mistake owners make when selecting a Property Management Company (PMC) is ASSUMING instead of CONFIRMING.It's often a case of not doing enough research, as they don't know what they don't know!