The condo would be a long term hold (10+ years) so I would suspect there would be some growth even at nominal 3% per year rate. 

Robert  all the on line sellers of information.. are teachers and your the student.. they sell their advice and or information.. they are not going to give it away.. although the industry has all mirrored itselfeach guru or information seller acts the exact same way.give something for free.. then do a 3 day training for a nominal amountall with the goal to sell their full package of info for whatever the market will bear.. the more successful sellers of info.. can get 30 to 50k from clients for their info.. lessor known or those with smaller marketing budgets may only get 3 to 15k.there is no real secret sauce to real estate.. it seems to be an industry over run with the idea that you can get seriously rich in a short amount of time.. ( which is probably hyperbole)  well not probably it is.you can go on E bay and buy any of the guru's written material for pennies.. you may want to try that.but other than that your experience is what the industry is... bait and switch high pressure sales tactics and selling the same information that has been around for decades... think of MLM  and how they market those companies.. this is the same back end marketing comp;anies fronting for these RE  information sellers.. same process's  they are tried and proven to work on the mass's.

You have to remember that most seasoned agents are not jumping at the bit to work with investors because the commission (especially after splitting with their brokerage) is nominal for the amount of work it becomes.

This is how I would connsider it:You will see a nominal cash flow, basically break even using a relatively conservative model for an individual operator.

Rinse and repeat that one.Yep, the sell is in a big hurry and has an excuse, gotta move quick (first red flag) doesn't have time for a search and all that, nominal sale price (second red flag) wants to use a quit claim deed to sell (third and really a big red flag), no closing agent or title insurance, you can flip this baby and make some money.....how many red flags do you need?

The spread between a 30 year fixed and a 5/1 arm is only around 1.3% now...really nominal savings that can't possibly impact your returns in a significant manner.

@Mohammed Alam I second the nomination for @Russell Brazil. 

'Ask for everything' is rookie advice yelled from the back of a short bus.I nominate this for quote of the week.

Rather than start our supply list over, we stuck with it and it was not a smooth process and through the process I also learned the savings by going to a big box versus local suppliers results in only a nominal to zero savings and not worth the extra hassle.The biggest lesson learned is that compiling fixtures lists is time consuming and unless you're engaging a designer to spec materials and fixtures to be used, like I do on my commercial projects, you need to be better prepared than I was.

feel to it lol.Keep wondering when im going to hear the (for just a nominal fee!)