The basement, like the one you saw, had several inches of water in it due to a large horizontal crack in the block foundation wall about 2 feet off the floor.

Regarding what is a good home - I care more about the block and the street.

You will hit many stumbling blocks during your journey.

Our areas is 40 blocks, with four busy streets as the boundaries.  

With national for retail they usually go up 2% a year but in blocks every 3 to 5 years.

What was the biggest stumbling block for you to get started?

we now carry out everything when we leave at night... such a pain, but don't want to go through that again!

The property is just 2 blocks from an elementary school so hopefully I can keep them as a long term tenant and the kids don't make too much of a mess.

You cannot do anything to stop them, and you probably can't even cause them any significant pain after the face.

Sam, this is common for more expensive homes and commercial.As Karen mentioned the looky-loos, consider what goes on to show a property in commercial that has tenants, the tenants need to be notified, if it's offices, that can be a pain if a CPA has to work after 5pm and have a couple agents and a couple buyers, maybe a money guy all checking it out.