Cap rate was still decent when I sold it, even at its updated value, versus alternatives.

Pittsburgh was the highest appreciating market this year with 22% growth and has been attracting investors from all over the world!

Alternatively, if you're wanting to do something more aggressive, you could consider a balanced fund, such as Vanguard's LifeStrategy Income Fund (VASIX), which is 20% Stocks / 80% Bonds.

So knowing who your most likely tenant is and potentially what types of finishes they are drawn to, if not similar to your own, can help attract a better tenant.

Here in Michigan, it’s not as easy, so I’m exploring alternatives.

Yes, they should be happy to do it and yes, you'll have to find alternative solutions for the buy and rehab.

Alternatively, anyone know of any genuine private lenders that are open to this?

@William Coet it’s a different business model altogether.I love highly desirable areas that attract highly skilled high income college educated workforces.They tend to be more liberal and therefore the landlord tenant laws.The percent of their income that goes to rent is typically much less than 20% so a rental increase of 5-10% is nothing to them.They are typically lower cap rate areas and therefore every dollar of net operating income that is earned is explosive to the underlying asset value.

Some times in a slow market and we need to attract tenant to sign a lease, we throw in some of these items because the cost of individual items is less than we lowering the rent by even $50 a month ($600 a year).

Perhaps not a trend to consider across the city but any neighborhood that would attract college educated young professional families seems to be a good bet if you wanted to focus on this asset type.I plan to build 12 townhomes as a second phase of a condo/townhome project in a good area of Mount Airy near the Chestnut Hill boarder and even though I’m likely to years away from being ready to begin phase 2, my current plans are to keep the 12 homes as rentals for the precise reasons I outlined above.