If your goal is to offset your mortgage with a house hack then Lowell would be a good bet, but if you're looking for a longer term appreciation play then the areas closer to the city would be better, although the offset from cashflow may be lower than what you're looking for.A good step for you would be to dig into specific areas more as @Lien Vuong noted above.

It still is very possible to find properties that meet the 1% rule without much difficulty; but it’s also tougher now to find a mortgage for anything valued under $100k – regardless of condition or P&L.To me, the shenanigans Code Enforcement continues to play on a new owner after a sale plus the recent increase on the annual rental registration fee really discourages buying more in the City.

FHA rates are actually lower than conventional right now even though there is a monthly mortgage insurance it’s not much in most cases.

Sharing our home a bit has been a small trade-off for living nearly mortgage-free while building wealth.

We have never taken money out of the rental business, it either goes towards buying more properties, improving existing ones or paying off loans.

How can you find out if an existing mortgage is assumable?

I’m not 100% sure if this is what you are asking, but if you put 10% down at purchase you probably still have about $360k on your mortgage.

As others stated, if the existing structure is legal but non-confirming that should not be an issue.

This is why I always hate on big banks for mortgages - while this kind of thing is not exclusive to them, it tends to happen with them at a much higher frequency.

Not sure the final outcome, but I'm guessing that is a case where you think things are risk free, but I expect the purchaser was out significant legal fees that were not reimbursed and ended up not getting the property.I've always thought about this in the rare instance that a super nice and super valuable property goes to sale with a mortgage on it.