If pawtucket keeps moving up not going to be worth it for us amateur investors. 

I'm willing to bet you will spend more on the cleaning and repairs than Situations like this are how amateurs get themselves into trouble because while you are trying to be nice to the tenant, the tenant could care less about you!

My third caveat is that the industry is dominated by amateur mom and pop places -- so there's a lot of upside with many properties, but I also suspect that it's harder to run a self storage facility than it looks.Self storage is really an interesting market to be in at this point.

So from an amateur I would agree with your findings.

Amateur investor here that will hopefully soon be buying my first MFR.

I'm with Ryan on all counts here, I've done some places that were pretty bad, and the only ones I've gone "to the studs" on were FIRE DAMAGED, and those are not for amateurs.

Mike Watkins  amateur hour.. you guys are really laughable.. just pay for the friggin house.. this is ridiculous..

This is REI, not amateur hour...there'll be other deals, and you'll be more ready.

My spot in greenville i bought under 400k in 2018, since then the house is worth 500k, and cashflows net $1000+ every month.. except i had to evict last year and got tons of fines for amateur mistakes.

The biggest hurdle that newbies and amateur investors have is they don't know very simple and basic real estate math.