If the bones are solid, will the market support a more expensive home, building up?

Make no bones about it, this is being watched by other legislators (maybe from your state) and with the cumulative issues that exist in the real estate market/industry today (not to mention all the bashing in the media and growing public disdain), this could just take on a life of its own and spread like wild fire (to other state platforms)...Some of you might be reading this and say, "Scott's a lender and this is a self serving crusade from a self-important blowhard who sits at a table for one

As always, good advice REI...T bone...I know what you are saying about returning phone calls, some people are horrible at it!

Luckily, it had good "bones....Just some background info - Greenwich, CT is a very upscale, expensive area in CT just outside of New York City, so a cheap redo would have been an overall, poor investment.

This didn't start 6 months ago no matter what bone-headed economist tells you to deceive people from the sham that is happening and most don't understand or realizes it.

Your ideal rental will tend to be the more bare bones starter house without the granite and cherry.

I understanding starting locally, paying your land lord dues and making your bones in areas close to home from a logistics point of view... but after you've done a few, is it wise to continue in a less efficient area or expand your horizons to better investment arenas?

Meaning when I go buy a car I don't look at the paint job.A paint job is just small money and some gloss on the tires.I focus on the expensive items like the bones of the vehicle.So with a house I know which items are cheap to fix and which items are expensive and I also know if the repair they are claiming was made when trying to sell to me is correct or it was done improperly and will fail soon and will need to be redone completely.You can try to find another manager but if you have a little house where the manager only make 60 bucks a month etc. there is not much money to be had for the grief involved.I just hope you didn't overpay for this property and expect to try to unrealistically cut repairs to now maintain a profit margin.That won't work and will eventually hurt you upon resale of the property with deferred maintenance.A number one mistake I see is over paying and then grasping at anything to cut costs.

If it's your deal, try to get it low enough to meet your buyers criteria and make your spread while leaving meat on the bone (hint: what buyers say doesn't necessarily match their actions).

I'll gladly cherry-pick the "bones" of this boondoggle in a few years, just like I'm currently picking the bones of the specuvestors who were all over town five years ago using liar-loans to build paper mache RE "empires".