I own two rentals, one in Grand Rapids, MI and one in Raleigh, NC, but live in NY. 

@Jeff Gebhart are you working in the Grand Rapids area?  

I'm not sure about your market, but ours has been changing pretty rapidly.  

Huge house (5/2 2400 sq ft) in a rapidly changing area but the house is in really, really rough shape.

The values in my neighborhood are going up rapidly so my plan is to hold onto as a rental and take a HELOC to use the cash for flips or rentals.

Hello Bigger Pockets,My name is Jeremiah and I am an aspiring buy and hold investor from Grand Rapids.

Hi, as the title states I'm trying to get my foot in the door of the reo market here in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

I remember not too many years ago in '08-'11 when the whole fix and flip thing started steaming up and folks with limited funds, especially leveraged funds, via hard money lenders were jumping into the fray like a leaky sieve only to be stifled long term turnarounds on the flip side.In the first couple of years, and I'm talking the San Diego Market only, the rapid fire turnaround time on F&F was as fast as 30 days, then 60, then 90 and soon some flips were taking as long as 120-160 DOM before flippers were revisiting their capital and repaying their hard money lenders. 

I tried to purchase houses for investment but when I saw house prices rapidly increasing like crazy ( I feel artificially ) I felt it wouldn't last and I didn't want to get stuck with an over leveraged property so continued with my remodeling business in Virginia Beach.

Example: one of my 3/2 homes i bought $135k renovated it with $35k and it yealds $1800 /mo while the home is now worth $270k and my initial value goal was $220k, the homes in this area increased rapidly due to GreatSchool district and lack of great schools while many are now moving to the area, Zillow states increases of 10% per year in appreciation.