You have to run your numbers and be certain of your assumptions.On the second one, unless you are experienced and have a financial situation that allows you to take advantage of the loss - or you are speculating with appreciation, it is hard for me to justify.

For contractors, taking bids is very time consuming and it is speculative work. 

Of course, this is wildly speculative but who doubts that some bureaucrat wouldn't propose something like this.

I speculated with options at one point, and made over $200,000 with an initial investment of $40,000.

They should know what’s real and what’s speculation.

San Bernidino and Riverside county which are huge there are easily a million platted vacant lots that were done by RE speculators back in the turn of 1900 to 1940s.

Pros: No maintenance / no tenant / no insuranceCons: No cash flow / No leverage / Appreciation is based on speculations.

This leads me to speculate that in the far future when Atlanta becomes the big city I think it’ll be, this Condo will probably be worth a lot more in the future, so this is actually an ideal unit for a long term buy and hold (if you have other cashflow to deal with the expenses).ExpensesI’m just going to post a picture of the spreadsheet I used for this.Excluding the Mortgage, the four main expenses here are the HOA fees, Taxes, Property management fees for when expansion occurs, and vacancy being tied with Property Management Fee.

Looking forward to seeing less speculators (like before) and seeing more investors rehabbing (like I'm seeing a bit more now).

Some , such as Denver appear to be in a bubble where the prices of homes are rising way faster than the price of rent (12% vs 8%) indicating speculation on home prices.I love speculation, once I am already invested :)  So a lot of these cities were ruled out.Oklahoma City made a few lists, one in particular that intrigued me was as a great place for baby boomers to live a working retirement.