How about in the Cedar Rapids area?

I picked his brain a lot with how to get started.I then found Joe V. and the folks at the Ann Arbor REI club, which really saved me from a bad deal early on and helped to get my education on par very rapidly.  

So it allowed them to scale rapidly and to have the income and cash flow to hire full time maintenance  and a leasing agent. 

I would say both cities are growing with the surrounding suburbs expanding rapidly.

Institutional lenders tend to deal much more harshly with them.Depending upon the specific area of the country, non-owner-occupied house loans are virtually non-existent or difficult to get.Bankers seem to have a blind spot when it comes to the interests of the speculator in EXISTING houses.While it might be routine to make 100% construction loans to builders and developers (although these, too, are drying up rapidly), the thought that someone might want to make a 90% or 80% loan to purchase an investment turns otherwise jovial Mortgage Loan Officers into pinch-faced misers.They suddenly forget long standing banking relationships and outstanding credit histories, mumbling about money being tight and bank policy being restrictive at the present time.What then is the solution?

AORE meets the 2nd Saturday of each month at 8:00 AM over at the Savannah Rapids Pavillion.

But with the disappearance of smaller community banks, as they are rapidly acquired by larger institutions, many industry experts are concerned that credit in local economies will disappear.

Should I look for properties still (I am considering investing in my home town Grand Rapids, MI)?

I'd check out Quest IRA....they do a ton of education and are growing quite rapidly and their customer service is 2nd to none!  

My name is Zachary Horn, and I am a real estate agent here in beautiful Grand Rapids, MI.