It's way too shaky of an environment for the long distance STR operator.

When you make the investments it grows in a tax-deferred (or tax-free environment if you are using Roth). 

What’s the investor environment look like in that neighborhood?

Put yourself in the guests shoes. 2.) find good cleaning people, stick with them, and constantly be training and improving them and their work environment. 

Proximity and identification of higher worth asset pockets becomes difficult/volatile to predict.Political environment and societal expectations that can be borderline ideological with regards to the aboveIf the crime does not get under control (see the above thoughts on education, gini, poverty, etc) this will weigh on perceptions and asset values for years to comeOn the upside:Indy is positioned well as a logistics hub which fueled growth, and it has a reasonably diversified economy.There is access to high quality higher education in the area.I will not invest in Indy although I did look at it awhile back.

We're in a historically low interest rate environment, but rates are rising and the days of rates in 3's are gone. 

As a buy-and-hold real estate investor, it's really an ideal environment. 

I'm just going to paste part of my response below:Manufacturers generally want a large number of units to produce because repetition and quantity lend themselves well to the manufacturing environment.

3rd floor condo is the key to this....you can do everything humanly possible in your unit, but unless the others do the same, you will never get rid of them...ever....In a condo environment, the attack has to be way wider than your unit and it will take more than a few days...probably a month or 2 at minimum.

People understand the risk of paid of real estate in today's litigious (sue-happy) environment but real-estate investor's seem to forget the "RISK" of DEBT.