Inexperienced, we had a lot of troubles identifying the real problems to fix in those houses and even worse to estimate rehabs.

Lower yield assets might not be your cup of tea, but the yield of the asset has nothing to do with the strategy. 

--I am simply an inexperienced newbie (with one bad experience as an accidental landlord under my belt) looking for insight on deal analysis techniques from more experienced professionals.  

But heck you are good looking.. they will probably invite you in for tea!

There are also inexperienced owners who don't communicate properly.

Close to intown I see crazy prices that are not sustainable, lot's of old houses falling apart with lipstick on them and over valued, high property taxes, aging county and city water and sewer systems (some 100 years old), etc.It's just not my cup of tea but other people love it.

I can make any deal return 5% and 15% IRR, but I could very well be wrong, overestimating, inexperienced, or flat out lying. 

The key difference between the two is that IRR requires modeling an exit, and for inexperienced investors, that one major assumption, years in the future, has an outsized impact on IRR, which is less than ideal.

As an inexperienced investor, these are the types of lessons I continually seek. 

We see this all the time on here with posts from inexperienced landlords.