If I end up holding the unit purely as a rental investment.

@Joshua McMillen It's clear from your post whether you're trying to solicit ideas as to how to invest or whether you're purely talking about the mindset (aka law of attraction).

He responded by getting a guy from 120 miles away who had been an arhborist for 6 months at the time (mind you we live in a major city, there are dozens of arbhorists within a few miles of us...he was shopping for someone who was purely new and would say anything for business IMO) to illegally trespass on my property to assess the tree.

***While I am getting my sales agent license (taking the test in a week) for the pure sake of access to numbers, I still want to invest in properties while helping out families along the way.

Just pure dollars, With the savings of 1330/month but the loss of 2 hours per day that equates to about $30/hour.

I'm looking to diversify from a pure equity portfolio and go into real estate.

You will also spend about $100/m on HOA for that.If you are looking for purely rental property, you could grab a nice SFH in north east Raleigh for about 180k and get $1400/mo on rent with no HOA.

I'm sure plenty feel justified in doing it because they know of other fraud in the system, some just pure greed. 

Is it purely price driven or is there something about the area that appeals more to you as an investor and your tenants as renters?  

These gains in home sales activity are being driven by pure demand."