After listening to BP Podcasts, I noticed a trend...build a track record and the money starts to come(with marketing and legwork of course). 

I'm staying away from SFR's (not to mention condos/townhouses) that are in any kind of decent shape, because the competition is so fierce, it always ends up in a bidding war.

The property is in good shape and so is he!

The back fence is in bad shape but we are not planning on replacing it for the time being.  

I have an opportunity to buy a townhouse that's in good shape. $155k, with 20k down, 4% interest on a cd.

They are in very good shape so I wouldn't be too worried about it except there is a tinyl back porch that I want to pull off and the windows need to be replaced.  

Well all of you are getting into pretty sharp detail about all this and honestly I'm struggling with a couple things. 1) I didn't see any end to a post that dictated anything with clarity in terms of making a purchase decision so it all seemed rather academic in nature, which is great but even with 2 degrees, about 10 minutes of that required a break from the material. 2) The discussion seemed to chase a lot of "what if" scenarios with expectations that current trends in recovering markets would be linear in that the heat will keep coming and something has to keep rising, either rents, price, rates etc.So, I may have a very different vantage point being here in the middle of the country, nearly all the posts were from either east or west coasts.

Never buy a property based entirely on price trends (people who bet on appreciation lost their shirts in places like florida).

I would like to know what others are doing and trend from there.

Got a few grey hairs over that , but its trending in the right direction now.