I put the opinion "commissions have always been negotiable" in the same category as Henry Ford's famous statement of "you can have any color Ford you want, as long as it is black."

I was lucky enough to find a property just a few blocks from my TK purchase that was in excellent condition, fully tenanted with two units, passed the inspection with flying colors and is grossing close to the 2% rule.

With a mix of college students, medical professionals, and blue-collar workers, the rental market stays pretty steady.

Long term buy and hold RE in good locations is probably one of the lowest risk investment vehicles IMO, similar to blue chip aristocrat stocks except even less risky because even long-established companies can go out of business but real estate very, very rarely ever goes to zero. 

I go a little more blue collar outside of the city and can get 20% 

In particular Overland Park, Olathe, Lee's Summit, Blue Springs and North Kansas City.

I would add that you can go a long way just having some clean color schemes (two wall colors and one trim color will do almost any house) and a few tasteful accent pieces. 

I've had some blue collar ones all the way up to software engineers and everything in between. 

Gray area interpretation up to individual courts which have rendered seemingly contradictory decisions.  

We decided to make a mini-working-vacation out of it and grabbed a STR outside of Blue Ridge.