I'm on the Tennessee side of the NC border and totally agree with you - still lots of opportunities in some of these southeast US markets. 

paying recapture is the most NON talked about event on BP or in real estate.. and why when folks talk about buying for only cash flow and appreciation IE speculation or gambling those folks totally miss the point and do not have a full picture of the Lifecyle of a real estate investment.. if you have NO appreciation your recapture tax is going to eat into your IRR in a negative manner.and for a lot of folks to 1031 one little house with 20k coming out of it is hard to do.. since the house never went up.. the other thing is people that say they are buy and hold forever.. this rarely happens.. life happens life changes.. and so 7 to 10 years down the track MOST folks unless they have decided to make it their lifes work IE be a full time professional landlord.. they sell .and then that pesky recapture they never knew about or thought about bites them .. :) 

Unfortunately our plans to buy in Windsor changed when we started networking south of the border, and am now buying and selling in Ohio, New Jersey, and Tennessee.

Unfortunately the property is border-line near crime areas.

There are those who would say that investing for appreciation is either speculating or gambling, not investing.

I hope to retire south of the border in about 10 years, so at 55. 

A blue chip dividend growth stock say Proctor and Gamble will have a lower PE ratio, say 15, that might be the equivalent of slow steady appreciation, but no real price appreciation. 

Seems like in most cases they own the bordering property, know the family and think they can get a simple agreement to split. 

You should reach out to @Elliott Milek, he's a savvy cross border accountant who also invests in US real estate, and resides in the Ottawa area.    

I work on the border in Del Rio, so I split my time between cities.