I would agree with the others in this post that the opportunity in Chattanooga is tremendous.

Lawrenceville has already seen tremendous growth.

Unless the property is in a high demand vacation area or in the best school district, your pool of buyers may narrow tremendously.

Good flips are hard to come by here and due to the tremendous military presence, rentals are RED HOTTTT!!!!!

If the immediate cash needs aren't tremendous, you probably wouldn't be too exposed using a HELOC for 12 months until you can sell it without incurring capital gains.

Being that I have family whom I can stay with while rehabbing properties has been a tremendous advantage however, investing from afar does come with it’s difficulties.For the past several months I have been putting offers on properties but haven’t been able to get any of my offers accepted until...Oct 24th- Bid $50,000 on HUD property (ask $59,000)Like most properties I bid on I had not seen the house.

Using the real numbers helped bring tremendous clarity, thanks for taking the time to answer that.

That helps tremendously!

If you can't close on this deal then you're doing a tremendous disservice to the seller. 

When you consider the low rents this cost cuts deep into your profits and there was no way I was going to pay $6,000 to put a house back together, rent it to a scumbag for one year for $1300 to $1500 per month, pay a management company, pay property taxes, insurance and all the other bills and then pay $6,000 to clean and paint the house one year later.Las Vegas properties appreciated tremendously in the past 2 years and I am no expert, but when you consider the fact that the houses have already appreciated and consider the rent increases are not keeping up with the rising house costs I don't see Las Vegas as a good buy and hold with the exception that I am wrong and houses do continue to appreciate to where the appreciation offsets the destruction your tenants do.I own homes in California, Las Vegas, Idaho and Massachusetts and in my 55+ years I've had almost zero property destruction in every state but Las Vegas.