Can they prove how long it takes to rent a vacant property?

I'm okay with the risk as long as I understand it.

We are looking to do a private money lending deal with a company out of Chicago on a SFH. 

We are seeing a lot of movement downward within our firm and with our clients.

Some investors think I am crazy doing that and perhaps so, but I take other people's money seriously and even when the crap hits the fan (and it will if you do enough deals for a long enough period of time), paying back your lender is priority one in my book.Most of my deals for private money also include a balloon payment rather than monthly payments.

Evicting the tenants and moving in to perform repairs myself while I explore Detroit, as I have never been there before, but this process might take a long time.I would appreciate any advice or insights on how to proceed.

Here is what I've learned following interest rates for a long time...If you listen carefully to the experts, they are wrong 50% of the time. 

Our priorities in terms of market is there needs to be- anticipated economic growth (lots of tech companies are moving into Columbus),- prices need to allow us to buy in all cash (400k or less, ideally up to 300k),- we want the area to be safe (when looking into places like Dayton, OH or Memphis, TN for instance it looks like all our boxes are checked on paper, numbers wise but we realized quickly there are a lot of unsafe areas and we could have the potential for problem tenants)- yearly expenses to be relatively low (i.e. we are avoiding NYC and the tri state area, California, etc. for having extremely high taxes).Is our initial analysis on the right track for Columbus?

While searching we are lining up all the other items needed to have the STR up and running day 1. 

That has worked so far but it's hard to say how long that will last.