Quote from @Casey Wilson: Hi there, I was wondering if any Detroit-metro experts from the PB community could offer advice on what areas in the Detroit-metro area might be worth exploring for rental properties (ranging from single family homes to 5+ unit apartment complexes).

I never said you can't make money buying entry level single family homes in the Midwest or any market for that matter....but the investors who are most inclined to succeed are the hands on operators, not the passive investors or those paying retail price for a turn key in a lower tier neighborhood with no barriers of entry.

You can get solid cash-flowing single families in the 90-120k price range and duplexes in the 130-180k price range.

My single family home is rented, but I got lucky getting the bare end of good interest rates, and I made sure rents would cover mortgage upon leaving.  

There's other items such as this where it may be helpful to talk to a CPA/EA for a little tax planning, especially since you'll likely get caught up in the passive activity loss limitations if taking bonus on a single rental property as I often see.It's also useful to mention that even if you do the cost seg study (I'm assuming you're doing one to be talking about this), you'll still benefit from accelerated depreciation in the form of shorter useful lives on the assets where you received bonus from.

The housing crisis saw record numbers of foreclosures of single-family homes in Maricopa County in 2010.

Are you having luck doing new-build single-family infill projects? 

Purchase price: $2,400,000 Sold a single-family home and did a 1031-exchange into a 5-unit building at a cheaper price.

It's been great - the property is 100% paid off and the house is worth 300-340k generating approx $2300/mo (that's after utilities/management fees etc.)I'm considering selling the property to buy 3 more within the same price range in the same market. 

You need to know the law like the back of your hand, have policies and procedures in place to deal with problems swiftly/accurately/legally every single time, and be prepared to deal with tenants that push back hard or try to take you to court.