However putting a time pressure on a purchaser typically indicates they are not comfortable enough in the merits of their program that it can stand up to further scrutiny.  

I want to know the person requesting a booking is who they say they are, and then I decide if I want to rent to them or not based on the merits of their request and their past booking history.My overall recommendation is to rethink your approach to these problems a little bit - first, look to the established, successful companies and model yourself after their methods.  

I fail to understand the merit of this argument.

A "negative cash flow" investment (that you'd likely be getting downtown) does not necessarily mean "bad", and a "positive cash flow" does not necessarily mean "good".Each property needs to be looked at on its own merits (and compared to similar sales nearby).Many hundreds of threads here on BP only give the specifics for a particular property, but with no mention at all about what other surrounding similar properties sold for.But Arthur, you won't do that, right?

However, I live in California which is notoriously aggressive on this point (making any LLC owned by a California resident pay at an $800 LLC tax for "doing business in California" just by merit of living here), so my viewpoint may be skewed by that experience.

I actually ended up moving forward with deal on the merits of the existing property itself. 

James Enright there’s probably merit to that.

Institutional investors have long understood the merits of this asset class, and relied on it to gain stability that balances market uncertainty.

The properties I am bidding on are generally 80+ years old so it's mostly to protect me from fire damage and foundation issues, but I can see the merit in your approach. 

While I also heard that multi-family is the way to go, what I found is that my net worth was not high enough to merit purchasing a property of the size that I wanted (~50 units) where I could afford the property manager more effectively.So I proceeded to purchase a single family house that was flooded, and I'm working on purchasing a few others in similar condition or in strong rental areas.