Me having several thousand good reviews help, but personally I would not book a property with 0 reviews. 

Cons - Risks as stated by others, can limit which renters are looking at your house. 

As my wife is a realtor, we’ve helped several people from Bigger Pockets find their second home/STR.

Hey @Dalton Foote - I highly suggest  using a renovation loan and house hacking a multi-family if that is possible with your current life circumstances.The 203k and homestyle renovation loans are just amazing products and drastically help you reduce your risk, in my opinion, because you are able to leverage the cost of the entire renovation with such a low down payment loan.We work with a lot of clients who use these products in Chicago, and no matter what, in the long term, they gain great equity.If you aren't able to house hack - the process is essentially the same, but just with more money down with hard money or conventional construction loan.

There are several threads about Brad on this site where you may learn all you need to know about him, and perhaps there are similar threads about Rod.

I've sold several homes in this area for my real estate clients too, and they've all been happy up here. 

@Matthew C. several thoughts:1) Appears you have a Class C or D property. -- Thus, you can expect to get Class C or D tenants, which have a 15-25% probability of defaulting on their lease payments.2) If your PMC is lowering FICO to 550, what are they doing to improve their screening in other areas?

I was fortunate enough to live in Detroit for several years, so I was able to establish a network before moving back to California.

Hi, pre foreclosure in all of its permutations, before the bank sends Notice of Default (NOD) or efter which is state even county dependant but often starts a 4 week clock till the trustee auction are the 2nd most difficult deal scenario and IMHO only experienced investors should bother, the 1st most difficult deal scenario are bidding at the court house steps on lord only knows what is being auctioned off sometimes even 2nd mortgages, you need to do so much home work to attempt to reduce your risk at the court house steps...Pre foreclosure no one talks about these issues, always about the nice sounding stuff like "motivated seller" get a good deal etc etc both are usually not the case.- 95% of folks in pre or post NOD want to stay in their house, keep their house inspite of them 100% will loose the house at the auction. 

We own several properties and now manage 18, with a few more coming online soon.