All major flippers in town have heavily compressed ARV to accommodate for the potential of the downward slide to continue.

Nicholas L deserves a major shout out in regards to looking out for others too.

Most often it's in free & clear properties but, in a high enough desire area like these, and with low enough mortgage balance, yup, some can 100% get enough on the sale to have it all make sense because as @Jay Hinrichs has pointed out that in these areas the majority value is in the land not the structures on the land. 

I find that cash flow is very important so that I don’t have to come “out of pocket” to pay for major improvements / repairs  

As an investor here myself, I can tell you we're seeing solid rental demand here thanks to the strong job market and major employers developing here. 

I agree with the majority: the wisest move is to live in an affordable market where your dollar will go 3x as far.

The problem is that we start seeing public push-back from the DNS (Department of Neighborhood Services, they issue fines) and the press: it gives landlords a bad rep - the newspaper does not differentiate between OOS and local.

I mainly use FCI and Madison for the majority of my notes.

The thing that the gurus never tell anyone is that the majority of creative finance deals are done by investors who don't need creative financing, that is their leverage and why they can walk away, thereby making them more attractive then the one person who can only do the deal one way because they have no money of their own.

Any other major syndication site has restricted sold data so it will be incomplete.