I've been looking at single family home prices and rental prices in Austin TX and its suburban areas, and it feels like it's extremely unrealistic to find something that passes the 2% rule.

They're a little trickier than normal owner/occupied loans so you want an expert walking you thru it.  

I understand dead money but with high interest rates and putting minimal money down or re-fying leaving 80% LTV the margins on SFR's is extremely tight. 

Choosing your market is extremely important.. 

These days homes can be extremely expensive and I'm not going to spend my hard earned money to settle for a home that has all these funky changes.   

Orlando is very competitive, therefore you have to provide an extremely clean, themed out home with close proximity to the parks in a community that also offers great resort amenities. 

I would say its extremely important to have a quick (like 60 second elevator pitch) for why you want to enter the business and what returns you are looking to get. 

If the owner lives in town, you could even go knock on their door, I find this to be extremely successful when you are going after foreclosed properties.As to your 1st post, you might want to look at city data for growing markets, It looks like Rochester lost population last year, vs if you look at sunbelt cities like, Houston, DFW, Austin, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, these cities saw at a minimum 1% population increase.

I really see Columbus Ohio as an extremely safe bet for the next 10-20 years.

I was also appreciative of Dave’s patience and exacting answers to any questions and was clear to me he has more than perfected his craft.The title company had a portal that collected all the documents and laid everything out in phases that I could log in at any time to see progress.As one who is extremely organized I felt I was in a safe space and knew any issues would be addressed.