Rents in my market (Phoenix) are improving drastically at the moment and appreciation has been EXTREMELY healthy over the last 5 years.

@Jared Smith the entire valley has been a great place to invest over the last several years and is continuing to rise in healthy appreciation and a popular USA city for people to move to take advantage of the many job opportunities and low property taxes our city has to offer!

Debt is not a problem if your reserves are healthy enough. 

Think buy with intent to do some small cosmetic changes but capex is healthy and sell, or hold and rent.

For me, after 18 years of selling, I've found a company that not only offers a better split and complete return of the company's split that is awarded to high producers, but also offers an opportunity to have a healthy passive income long into retirement. 

Appreciation is very healthy, which is good for those who hold properties long enough.

So I still have relationships from my past I just limit them in scope and have healthy boundaries.     

We usually have a fairly healthy reserve which is essentially our set asides for maintenance, capex and so forth.

I think a person with a reasonably healthy psyche can be happy any number of places.

I think this, combined with a healthy positive cash flow would protect me if vacancies go up during a recession (which is usually the opposite, I heard anyway) or rents stagnate.I'll let somebody who lived through 08-09 without getting "burned" chime in here and hopefully provide some wisdom!