Hard money lenders focus more on the property’s value rather than your personal debt to income ratio (which traditional banks use) allowing for quicker approval and funding.

My recommendation would be to engage an investment property focused realtor (not a general residential realtor) and let that person guide you through the process from pre-qualification to market/property valuation and selection. 

Further, if someone communicates the volume must be turned down or off, that person wins.

However, I have found local property managers to be very helpful in stating whether an area was difficult to rent, what the market rents were, and even personally knowing some of the tenants of buildings I was considering.

Typically someone who was communicative turns distant, unresponsive, blows you off when you're trying to talk to them in person, and the tall tale sign of boxes in the hallway.

This is dependent on your personal situation and strategy.

That is a great post, and I'd love to follow up and see how things went for my own personal knowledge. 

My personal preference for a buy and hold would be an already established area (or an area that's still gentrifying, but has already seen significant progress). 

You must report rental income on Schedule E and can deduct rental expenses like repairs, maintenance, property taxes, mortgage interest (allocated between personal and rental use), and depreciation for the rented portion.

While I've never invested personally in Detroit, my usual word of caution to investors in these "lower cost" markets is that while cashflow is great on a % basis, make sure to look at the actual quantity of cashflow.