And even then, the life cycle is generally pretty long from first contact to closing.  

If you want to buy in University city, I recommend staying as close to the universities possible in order to attract the best tenants and have the best room for appreciation.

Imagine if it cost 1000 to send out 50 letters but half of them responded and half of those wanted an offer and half of those accepted an offer and half of those closed and half of those resold for a net 50k. 

How close is your town to the next metro area?  

I'd find a sweet deal close it and see if you can get another one after that. 

If have investment property, we are looking for relatively updated units (we are ok doing some work ourselves), class C+/B tenants, with rents either close to market rate or that can be increased.

There are a lot of affordable properties in Knoxville, but the growth isn't terribly vibrant and the deman isn't what you'd expect for a city of that size and that close to the Smokies - you're mostly looking at college rentals for the meat of the move season, and the SF market, while it exists, doesn't really compare to Chattanooga. 

But you have closing costs for Refi, and sale, but in sale you get all your equity back out. 

I have been following closely the same update.

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