These areas usually strike a balance between affordability for investors and demand from tenants with vouchers.

There has to be some other angle usually with on-market that others are not seeing.

Helps with your debt to income, better opportunities at cash flow, and typically requires less down to purchase.In regards to challenges, I usually build in an extra 10-15% to deal with things that I can't see behind the walls, including dry rot, electrical or plumbing issues, etc.

Calling on the phone is usually useless as they'll tell you to come in.

You definitely would want to read through the county laws again.If you don't want the extra load up front, best to wait until you get the license.

With an extra vacancy or a maintenance issue or an extra turnover, this is definitely a negative cash flow producing investment.So when you say the rent growth and value growth have exceeded your expectations, I would love to have you respond as to how that is possibly the case. 

Usually its because there is a lot of debt risk. when interest rates went up a year or so ago I lost over 300k in sydication projects I was a part of because I didn't understand this concept.

I am eyeing up a property I want to buy that costs much more than usual so my plan was to use a hard money loan to purchase, and rehab it with my own money, then sell. 

The fix/flip might be a good way to get such a relationship started: usually has lower cash out of pocket requirements and you can sell the property faster to recoup the capital invested, plus any profits.

The buyer representation agreement states that the buyer commission amount offered by the seller (usually 2% to 3%) is credited/refunded to the buyer.