goal setting has been one of my weak points, so am trying to keep that present more all the time i'm strategizing.

Tyler you first need to DEFINE what you will be buying.Residential and commercial lenders are way different animals.If you want to buy an apartment building you can get awesome cash returns for your investment in Georgia or other states.Here the price paid per door for rent generated is much greater than appreciation only drive states such as Cali.Not saying people do not invest there but you get investors from other countries and other states such as New York.Cali etc. where there investment dollar doesn't go far for weak returns.I cringe when I watch the show "income property" on HGTV and someone bought an 800,000 house and are only getting 3,000 a month in rent.I think stuff like that is nuts.

They want to see 90% to 100% occupancy.Secondly if you could find a private lender they would not give out a larger secondary loan subject to the sellers first mortgage.That is a very weak position to be in.You have to be really careful in smaller towns.The fact that the seller stated it gets better with temp workers shows this might be a one to two company economy town.You want national businesses there along with mom and pop to prop up the economy.You do not want one to two big businesses and if they leave the town becomes a ghost town.I have seen this happen.There was a town where the main employer was for carpets.Many immigrants worked there and rented apartment buildings.The state passed a new immigration law and many fled the area and with construction down not as much work could be found.This led to 100% occupancy and rents going up to 70% occupancy among all the apartment buildings and rents going down.So it is critical when looking at these types of deals to understand what caused the problem and where does the town look like it is going long term.If you estimate the town will take 10 years to cycle and your goal is hold for five it won't really meet your goals plus can you harbor having a problem property until it up cycles again??

The market would sort it out and the weak banks would fail or get merged into healthier banks.

If the market is kinda weak and tenants are harder to come by I would specify outside only and a additional deposit.

After researching several neighborhoods, entry points, strengths, and weakness of both I had finally decided on Syracuse.

Some of the joists have rot and are weak, the problem is there is only around 12-14" under the house, no crawlspace, they actually had a hole cut in the floor in a closet for access.

You should be able to visit without any strings attached.Ok, I think that's enough of a wall of text for today (my greatest weakness!).

There are exceptions if the non-spousal beneficiary is disabled or chronically ill.Previously non-spousal beneficiaries could stretch the IRA distributions over their lifetimes. 

It made me think about my own strengths and weaknesses and wonder how I can tailor my efforts to better match them.