I've been buying and selling MF in Vermont for 10 years. 

If you can buy and hold, you will make money in the next 3-5 years, even though you may have a temporary negative equity experence. 

Is this a Single Family Rental or an actual commercial real estate property (office, retail etc.)? 

Do you think it’s better to buy a single family rental in the Saint Pete or the Tampa Bay Area?  

For example:  Will these be solely commercial (retail, office, etc) or will you be looking at residential multi-family as well? 

An example problem statement that I may have stated (and built the software for) in 2003, when I started investing full time: Build a tool for lead generation that collects county records from the county recorder's office (and property card data), finds the recent first mortgage defaults  from trustees websites or public filings for properties that are between 1000 and 1700 square feet, in a neighborhood of 90% like-kind properties with greater than 20 parcels, houses built after 1978, that can cash flow at current rates when fully leveraged. 

I'd never buy a development unless I was confident in the valuation and there was data to back the feasibility of the build. having preliminary approval is very different than permit ready where you can put a shovel in the ground day one.

In today's market, many office landlords would much rather walk away from their properties and take a loss than fight to attract tenants and avoid foreclosure.

In the end we did not feel like we had a lot of choice because we really did not want to lose the contract to buy the house.

This means we need to buy under an LLC and not our personal.