I wish more people were taking such a safe, fiscally conservative approach.

By buying into that HOA, you have now invited 100 complete strangers into your investment, whether they know anything about property management or money management or are fiscally responsible.Now, any one of them can attempt to get onto the board of the HOA. 

If you were in an A or B rental, then the colors and decor may be more of an influence... 

Numerous elements will influence your approach and city of choice, so it's critical to do extensive study before making any selections.

@David Dachtera I can appreciate that forecasting future real estate market projections can not be predefined as there are multiple unforeseen variables that can influence the market.

I personally wouldn't let the neighbor's comments influence my decisions on whether to move forward or not.

Now I need to build my circle of influence.

It gives me a good picture of the cash-flow in the most recent fiscal period (typically a year), but to carry that forward 2, 3, 5 or 10 years encompasses as many assumptions and predictions as does calculating an internal rate of return.Now, you can discount future cash flows and endeavour to calculate a series of CoC values ... or, perhaps an average CoC over a period of time ... but you are now getting into an exercise which is not entirely different than determining/projecting a rate of return :-)  Naturally the cash return is a component of overall rate of return."

Price swings up or down have no influence on my purchasing habits.

I would suggest that neither of us have any inside influence or info on banking regulations.