@Chris LainoDepends purely on the level of work that's needed for the home.At a certain level of physical distress, you won't be able to get a traditional loan product due to inspection or appraisal issues.If it's just outdated, you can still use a traditional product.Below that, properties in severe distress need to be purchased with a rehab loan or a hard money loan or cash.When the property is in poor condition, the deeper the discount.

I really appreciate the insight - now I need to delve into research !

@Travis Mullenixwww.city-data.com provides a good initial/big-picture look at the demographics of a city, broken down by a variety of factors…income, education, overall crime stats, etc.To dive deeper into the crime data, the police department for many cities maintain a website with call response metrics, crime maps, etc.  

Off the cuff, this looks like a lot of work, but you really need someone to dive deeper into the property. 

The bigger the shopping center, the more strategic this can become and the deeper this topic can go.

It's been easy and I know I can use the tools for deeper analysis but I haven't set those up yet.

So I'm getting deeper with this potential rental and numbers are looking OK without specifics yet from the seller so, I'm looking to the BP experts on specific questions I need to ask of the seller.

Just let me know if you would like to schedule a phone consultation at any point to have a deeper discussion on some of these topics.Zach

BP provides great information, but it's very easy to slip into the category of "thinkers" rather than "doers" if you delve into every forum post about virtual investing here. 

LOL It just gets deeper and deeper from here...Multiple tenants have expressed desire to buy the homes, but they expect their payments to go DOWN, not UP... because they have no concept of finance and actually balk at the actual sales price (even at rock-bottom).