The time has come for me to start investing in real estate and before doing so i'm looking to build a strong and dedicated team of partners: agents, lenders, contractors and property managers mainly in the Cleveland area (but also open to markets within a 2-3 hr drive away) that already possess an excellent track record in their line of work and that value long term collaboration.

if so, house hack in San Diego. 

What would you do in my shoes I don’t invest there so take this with a slight grain of salt but I’ve heard multiple stories of basically this exact scenario someone getting offered a big payday for something in Cumberland, rejecting it & always for some reason (house burned down, block got worse, sheetz decided they actually didn’t want someone’s land for a car wash after all) always selling for like 10-20k and regretting not selling. 

City won't let you rent out basement, but owner can live in basement.It may suck for 1-2 years, but then you'll have gained so much knowledge you can do better on the next one!

So I am assuming you were the lender on these properties and they did not manage them well and they went into foreclosure.

I wouldn't have any interest in buying something like this to hold since it would be so far negative cash flow wise on a monthly basis.

Asheville: Asheville is in the Blue Ridge Mountains, so it's a very outdoors focused community.

Air Force basic training happens here, so every week there is a big batch of families coming to see their kids graduate. 

This also begins YOUR title seasoning, so that when you're ready to take out a traditional mortgage, you can refinance and pay off the seller without a title seasoning issue. you can buy title insurance from the title company at closing. this is a good idea. 

We run into this especially at out parcels in grocery anchored centers, and our users generally can't make a ground lease work for the business case so the next best thing does tend to be the BTS or we often do Reverse BTS deals where the majority of the building design and management etc is done by the tenant.