Starting with a single-family rental (SFR) property is a practical approach.

Instead, focus on aligning yourself with an experienced investor who practices what they preach.I started investing house hacking.

Find Brandon's videos on YouTube for the "four square" method of analyzing homes and practice.

Hi Melissa,Thank you for the very practical advice and your insights.We have hosted providers, lawyers, grad students, nurses and one diplomat who stays in one of our 3 bedroom has the embassy paying for the house and she has renewed the past 3 years.I can see the bigger homes for corporate housing except for the one bedroom, one bath condo downtown near the hospital.i really appreciate you insights!

What is best practice?

They suggest relying on the inspection contingency instead.Is this a common practice right now, or is it specific to my area?

And your buyers agent should make it a practice to do a permit search on a buy side transaction.

In the next couple of years I will look at whether the long-term appreciation approach is practical.

I practice situation awareness and keep my stuff locked down to minimize the risk I'll be a victim.

I later heard but never exactly why, that the place was an absolute money pit and the buyer, who was very experienced, regretted buying it big time.It is interesting, but I ALWAYS do at least a bit of research on the prior owners and have found few "hard luck" stories, at least as far as either higher or high priced single fams go, they're by far the same story where the owner makes the financial decision to walk away, mainly due to the insane HELOC's etc they were giving out, like 125% of home's current value back in like 2006, so now they'll owe literally like $750k on a home that IF in great shape would at best fetch $500k, PLUS they trashed or semi-trashed the place, so they'd be really lucky to get $400k as is and often they may be business owners or whatever and have a relationship with a local bank who will then know "the whole story" behind the big hit they take to their credit score and not treat it nearly as harshly as the average Joe, who's practically banned from even entering the bank for years!