Due to the extreme volatility of crypto and potentially high transaction costs, you need to be real careful with harvesting crypto losses.Pick tax-efficient investments.

In our trade, I would not expect any owner or GC to get this correct since our industry is extremely specialized.

Or would the investors above been aware of the extremely high risk associated with these extreme high returns?    

The properties I am seeing in this situation in Toledo have been sold to the 1031 exchange buyers at extreme prices.

And, even then, hitting your rate target would still be extremely challenging unless you were paying points up front, in which case it would probably make more sense to just try to put in a bigger down payment (or pay down the balance if refi) instead and get better terms naturally offered at the lower LTV.

In fact if you don't do proper due diligence some are "traps" with bad layouts, fire damage, and tiny sized lots. 

Verifying last 2 years of rental history and income extremely important to find the “best of the worst”.Make sure you understand the Class of properties you are looking at and the corresponding results to expect.The City of Detroit has 183 Neighborhoods we’ve analyzed.

For me it's CA since I live here but the prices are extremely high for a new investor.

I think one of them offers a public API.Once you get your license, you can join the CAR Chicago Association of Realtors and I have found them to be extremely helpful with questions like this. 

I would do this first before engaging an agent unless you are extremely active.