for the most part you make money or lose money when you buy the property. that said my biggest piece of advice is don't cheap out on the reno spending an extra 5-7k in materials is often all it takes to make the diffrence between a builder grade house and an "hgtv" given the labor costs are by far the biggest part of your budget and fixed may as well have those guys installing nice finshes vs crappy ones.

Welcome. 1st thing you'll want to do when looking at Cleveland is give The Ultimate Guide to Grading Cleveland Neighborhoods a read.

As for KC take a look at The Ultimate Guide to Grading Kansas City Missouri Neighborhoods.

The recent sales activity is very high in price but the area if graded is D class if not lower. 

I wrote a blog post about the area that you may find useful: Ultimate guide - Cincinnati Neighborhood Grades

If you have other collateral, like A grade or better bonds, that would be better to leverage such deals.

I was really bummed about the "owner can not own more than 3 properties" aspect.  80% LTV is quite good for investment-grade HELOCS. 

Most "family office" these days are chasing investment-quality-grade debt.

If you have an O'Reillys auto parts or Walgreens (or any other S&P rates investment grade tenant) then you're golden.

Michael Roy I have looked into inspectors reports and they have grading scales of inspections.