Sometimes just the right street makes a significant difference.

Now, we just purchased another property right down the street.

A house on a street that I liked in a neighborhood I checked out in Baltimore came up for auction.

If the schools, streets, shopping and entertainment areas look like a C, attracting residents to pay the higher rates by upgrading the property to a A/B as you suggest (higher than the surrounding area) is typically not going to work out so well.  

I'm gonna keep this short and simple: If you want free leads of absentee owners follow this method..if you know your market: go to gosection8.com and text all the landlords on the site something like "I see you own a property on 123 street I'm looking to invest in the area would you be open to possibly selling a property?"

@Nadia Santacruz I've grown up in Cincinnati and like @Todd Dexheimer said it is a very street to street ..... but you can pretty much say that about every city in the midwest... for example, Todd thinks Walnut Hills is a "Dicey" area, but it's quickly gentrifying, and many think it's primed to be the next Oakley, OTR, Hyde Park, etc.

I know certain parts of Aurora are sketchy, so I am looking for some advice on zipcodes/streets to avoid.

You can google street view the streets and see how many board ups are there - and if there are more than a couple you may have trouble finding tenants.

@Michael Biggs I just drove there today and there is still water in the majority of the streets.  

There are only multifamily properties on this street.