There really are endless posibilities of external factors and have nothing to do with the roof.

When depreciation begins to fade, when the external property issues of a maturing area begin to slide, I dumped them and moved on.

Then I will respond externally with a response to the other person.I hope this helps and congratulations on moving forward with trying to buy your house.

Here it is easy to look at 20 properties and see which is the best value without a lot of speculation on external factors.  

For this reason some investors stay away from condos but as long as you do your homework condos can also have good opportunities with respect to rent to value ratios (RV ratios) and the HOA usually covers all structural and external maintenance issues.

This way you are not at the mercy of  external forces.

And the you have to find partners who can work with you to help you through the process.So the short answer you can start, but then you need support from many external factors to make it work.

Here is the data I have on it, hoping that you guys can tell me if this is a good deal:asking price: $179,000rent: $2495/mo (800+800+895)taxes: $2548/yrHOA: $7749/yr (all external maintenance + external insurance, $215.25 per unit per month)internal insurance: $630/yr (figure from seller, this number is much lower than it would normally be due to HOA insurance)Since all external repairs are done by HOA, I factored in 5% repairs and 5% vacancy (both of which seem conservative given the area), which gave me a ROI of 14.71% with 25% downpayment.Here is where things get interesting, and tell me if this is fine or if I should run from this deal.

It's not external. 

If it's a large bank they might use an external company to handle the volume and outsource it all.