You'll find strong CoC returns in most of the Midwest, especially compared to major cities in the Eastern US where it sounds like you've established yourself.

I am an wholeseller and investor in Eastern NC.

Eastern Washington is a very beautiful place.

Anecdotally you can get by without a view in Helen as it gets booked moreso to visit downtown.I don’t personally like downtown Helen as I found it too kitschy and crowded, but I loved the general area.We own in Clayton and have done very well, and more than once I’ve been glad we chose the eastern side of the mountains over Blue ridge 

I currently own a SFH in eastern WA and it's been generating amazing cash flow for me.

Thanks for asking the question.My wife and I are investors and we run a small REIA on the Eastern Shore.

That describe half of the Eastern United States.

I am currently in our first house hack (eastern NC) and its a base hit ( Duplex/ found on MLS/tenant is paying half/ with repairs we are looking at around 100 PURE cash flow per unit) Seems like you have the drive but now its time to hyper focus on the strategy you'd like to do and execute.

As far as rates, keep in mind cash out refi rates are always more expensive than purchase so even if rates drop you wouldn’t necessarily get a better rate and tbh it’s my personal opinion that rates are likely to remain in mid 6’s or so for the next few years, As far as appreciation with rates dropping, I’ll be honest I thought going from 8 to 6.5 would be a bigger impact than we’ve seen and while it’s stillpossible we see that come spring I do think some markets are just too expensive and are likely to go nowhere for a while, I think the areas with the best appreciation over the next few years and this is just my personal opinion, under 400k in prime Baltimore location’s, under 500k single family in Howard, PG and Anne Arundal county and under 400k single family on the eastern shore, the reason being those are still area’s that are around par if not cheaper than rent that are also nice places for a family to live, while most normal home buyers aren’t necessarily looking at price to rent ratio it certainly factors in subconsciously and I believe though I could certainly be wrong any growth from here on out is going to be driven by 1st time buyers looking for single family homes that are affordable to them relative to the rest of the metro area.

Since I already qualified with Eastern Savings Bank for one loan then I just requested they do both properties as one loan.