What you want to avoid are depressed markets, and those that lack good economic fundamentals.

The market is diverse enough to do well on flips, and fantastic for rentals.There are neighborhoods that are severely depressed, so you need to be understand where you are buying.Flipping is primarily a local activity, so you really need to focus on your backyard for that.

Honestly, it was totally depressing.

Instead, we only had 4. 3 of them were unqualified and the last was uninterested.As depressing as it was, I took the opportunity to film a video of the home on my iPhone so that I could show the video to any future, prospective tenants.

You do not want to go to depressed markets (i.e.

.$20k is very low - even in many of the more depressed markets which I would strongly question looking at, especially for your first investment.

Him and his wife have been surviving off the proceeds of it, has gathered some income, but (the main challenge currently) he's a Depression era person who's seeking "secure" investment strategies.

In our case, the person living there was moved to an assisted care living facility back in 2007 and the time was not right for selling the house since the market was so depressed.

I agree entirely (although I am convinced I have that manic depressive heat issue wife...

The area is really depressed and the margins can be a bit thin, but there's money to be made.