Stats will show that the success rate for those in your present position wishing yo get into real estate investing is about 5%.

As I'm starting out im realizing all sub 60k houses are in bad neighborhoods where the crime stats are higher and/or significantly higher than usual.

Here are other stats from HAR's report: In June 2018, there were 40,198 active listings in the area, down 3.9 percent over the year.

https://www.har.com/content/newsroom/Houston Real Estate Highlights in June Single-family home sales rose 1.8 percent year-over-year, with 8,518 units sold, the largest one-month sales volume of all time;Days on Marke...

High cash flow  ( I E identified as cash flow with 20% down )  as we know everything cash flows if you pay cash.and high appreciation rarely go together.. and % appreciation  you have to be careful with.. some folks can say hey my market appreciated 50% last year or last 5 years but the house went from 20k to 30k.. that's 50%  or you can buy in SF for 1 million and those appreciated 50% and went from 1 mil to the current 1.6 mil median SF home price.. trying to find this unicorn will cause some paralysis on your end if you get to literal about it.if your going out of state  AS @Brian Ploszay stated the people working for you in the market place are NUMBER 1 concern.. stats don't matter if you PM is not working right or your units get trashed  or what have you.

  @ Russell Brazil - no such document was signed and in the contract ( Standard realtor PURCHASE agreement section 19 - this is the legally binding contract that was used to purchase ) it gives seller the right to examine the title and notify the buyer if there are any problems so they can cure the default  before the closing date.

And I'm not sure how accurate their stats are.

I'm not an agent personally, but one of my brokers works with investors and tracks his stats and told me he won't work with out of state guys any more.

Interests rates where above 5% in 2006. no crystal ball but surely there's a year or 2 to go however i suggest it wouldn't  do any harm to start watching the monthly stats a little more carefully.!   

Is requesting to examine the inside prior to giving a purchase price typical of these kinds of off-market deals?