BUT - I am in the Northeast, so cost basis per unit is higher...so SFR rentals and even rent to own is a little tough (not impossible).

It is tough, very tough and boarders on impossible at times to find one single note and reverse into the owner to make a single sale.

From what I understand buy and hold here is next to impossible cause of astronomical taxes.  

But the new tenants were willing to wait & the transition was great.In the days of our 'rent to owns' we would do the same & schedule an open house as soon as we got notice of them vacating & we never had any problems.However, last year we did have one very difficult, miserable, stubborn, mean, impossible woman who would not comply.

We also have Yardi -> mySQL backups via scripts (PHP, shell) on linux linux systems... so we have access to our $millions in transactional rental data in the highly unlikely (but not impossible) case that system becomes unavailable.

I would say it's almost impossible that a bank will give you a loan.

Without that data its impossible to come up with an offer.

:) You can certainly buy, I have done loans for foreign homebuyers, I've forgotten the Visa issues or status required, sorry, but it may not be impossible.

I don't try to break down the individual expenses for a given property in a future year because that is impossible.

The commercial side is next to impossible to comp but from my estimates the best comps I have suggest 2-300k.