People tend to just focus on the front end financing which is only half the equation and often easier to obtain.The asset based lenders have their niche because of the fact that they base a lot of their decision to lend on the asset (which helps newer investors with little or no track record) and can be a really big help to experienced investors who are looking to purchase or refi and do not want to deal with the seasoning and DTI requirements that conventional and even some portfolio lenders have.

They tend to merely be front line workers and have to deal with lots of borrowers and their problems.  

These days houses in this range tend to be in C- to F areas because the A to B areas those houses have rebounded to 100k to 150k pricing and up etc.

I agree with @Jim Sakalis  I tend to have better tenant experience when I speak to previous owner directly. 

Also, I tend to stay away from the major nationals, this is really not their business and as such their pricing tends to be way off at least it was for me.

Keep an eye out for "Old North" Columbus which is north of the university and south of clintonville. you get a mix of young professionals with graduate students and deals tend to be a bit better than very close to the university.

This can be challenging, unless you plan to use that contractor to do the work they tend to not want to do estimates for free.

I will guarantee if you look harder you can do much better than that, yea Madtown prices are nuts, but if you looked to some of the surrounding "bedroom" communities, you will get the same or close to th same rent for half or less what your planning to pay

I think that we have to screen our tenants better here, but at the same time we have many more tenants available to us and we tend to fill units quickly even in down markets.

Market forces tend to equalize the opportunity, so the bottom line is to find something that already works and make it even better.