In low income areas, my goal is to make the rentals safe and clean.

Nice/clean house in desireable middle class suburb.

If you buy a place that does not cash flow then the snowball effect really runs in reverse.

It will be interesting to see what effect, if any, this has on the real estate slowdown. 8)

Some of my buyers still want to walk through or have their contractor walk through, and some will just do a drive by depending on the circumstances.Bottom line, yes, your buyer needs to know what's wrong with a property, but a professional property inspection is not always a feasible or effective way to achieve that goal.

So in light of the Fed's decision on Tuesday, I am curious to how this effects the average home buyer.

My guess (and my realtor sort of confirmed this) is that the market is whacked out due to the after effects of Hurricane Katrina.

New or not, you will have vacancies to deal with, property management (placing ads, screening tenants, doing evictions), taxes, insurance, and make ready costs (paint and carpet cleaning or replacemnet between tenannts.)

The basement is very clean and nice, concrete floor, the cops took out all of the plants.

So I saw this property that looked like it just needed some new paint and clean carpet.