Driving for dollars can be an effective strategy the costs (gas, time, energy, materials) have to be added to the deal analysis. 

Hi Seth Sherman thanks for your cautionary tale--- I am open to other buy and hold scenarios and will keep your comments in mind during deal analysis!!

.* We get as close as possible to ironing/feeling out deal terms that would be agreeable to the seller in advance of submitting an offer, including site visits if they are located in the same market we are vs. out of state/market.All of the above data provides us with enough of an analysis to know what our deal parameters are going to be, at least to within a few percentage points.

Also, have you done a comparison of the cost-benefit analysis on renting the home out v. renting the condo out?

What's missing from @Scott Trench's analysis is that oftentimes, GCE legislation is often coupled with rent control (as it is here in NYS).So, you have to keep this tenant just so long as he is paying, but hey - you can only raise rents 3% per year, and by the way, your city, county & school taxes are going up incrementally more. 

In your case, the break even analysis I mentioned would be critical. 

Their analysis is based on the growth of the larger metros throughout the United States that drive regional tourism into various vacation rental markets.

Part I.IntroductionSponsor underwriting is a critical aspect of real estate and investment analysis.

I am bad for getting analysis paralysis and have been searching for a couple months and have made a couple offers but none have been accepted yet. 

However, I prefer to start my analysis with supply.