Blue Point, my cousin is Joe Lombardo, Lombardo Homes, . 

You might want to look into the blue sky laws before you do that.

One of our new apt tenants (late 20s, seemed mature, responsible) called 311 out of the blue without reporting a problem with the heat to us.

We hold our capital in fairly stable and liquid blue chip with a dividend of ~5%.  

The reason you do this is to qualify them up front so you can run and assign the approval, lock the rate, approve the builder, review the Blue print, cost analysis and more.

Certain parts of Blue Ridge are becoming quite popular and would be a great up and coming place to get started in.

Yeah some online mapping services certainly have questionable accuracy, I always double check with property records for actual location.I could request til I'm blue, but some realtors are just going to give you what they want to give you or just what they know.Actually, it's not the "type" of listings that I'm concerned about in an online property search tool, it's the detailed info for each listing i.e price changes, DOM, sales history, etc. like Ziprealty.com provides (just no longer in my area) by apparently pulling info from MLS & public records.

STR's are more affordable in this market compared to their neighbors 30 mins south in the Blue Ridge areas.

I'd definitely get a less levered property in a good area of Denver, that's a blue chip. 

For that price range, you might investigate New Port Richey, Florida -- which has cheap property but blue collar neighborhoods that aren't as sketchy as the $60k Tampa markets.