Protecting yourself from any future issues will require a good understanding of the situation your house is in when you buy it.Tl;dr: crime here is relatively low, declining population numbers don't take students into account, properties are cheap, rents are high BUT be careful where you buy.This concludes my TED Talk, ha!

As far as office I remain intrigued by it, also at least in our area condos have been brutally hit and I think offer a “deal” without quite the downsides to office, I tend to think office/retail in suburban and even pandemic boom markets (I’ve started investing on the eastern shore of Md and have considered some office deals there) offers the best risk/reward of office because you have a population boom coupled with ultimately still a low supply of office space, where as urban areas have lost population and have a huge glut of supply, I think the ultimate fate of a lot of urban office trends towards zero/land value. 

Las Cruces is a small college town (home of the New Mexico State University Aggies) with healthy population of federal government workers and military contractors.

Main things being population growth and landlording laws.

Based on a gut check (checking the town population + location on google maps), this may be the case. 

These are the different properties that are included in the 1031 exchange requirement: commercial buildings such as offices, schools and different establishments that are important for the population, as well as single family rentals, multi family rentals, industrial facilities, and even raw lands are included in the like-kind.

You can't deny the job and population growth, though.

Given it's in a very low population area, it may just be an extremely slow, low demand rental.

Overall great macroeconomics great for investment - there's the booming tech scene, rapid growth in population and the job market, strong rental demand, and landlord-friendly laws.

Owensboro, the state's 4th largest city, has a population under 100K, and many OOS investors prefer cities with at least 300K residents and strong job growth.