Quote from @Khalilah Williams: Hey Matthew, I'm a but biased but I've lived all over the US.

Nothing is truly "passive" and a big misconception with new folks wanting to enter the real estate arena.For example, just bought a 6 unit using leverage and trying to secure a loan was a disaster of a process.I can only imagine what others have to go through on every time they purchase a property using leverage.But then again, I'm bias to the "cash only" approach.The constantly changing conditions, terms, keeping tight bookkeeping records and tax returns in order and regularly manipulating the BS credit score algorithm.Placing good tenants is more a skill then hope.It took me 10+ years to fully wrap my head around using leverage the right way and being able to "manipulate" the system to get better rates with a quicker turn around.Keep being great thanks for your reading and replying to my comments 🙏

And so frustrating that nearly every article in the media was biased towards the tenants' struggles and painted landlords as greedy and unsympathetic. 

So reading what I wrote, yes I guess I am bias for people who have been around and doing it with a stellar reputation.

@Mike Dymski, in my experience raising institutional capital early in my career, I would disagree about "following a sponsor" for years, and actually many of the deal level analytics (a majority of institutional investors invest in funds not deals), but your point is generally correct.Ultimately, what I see a lot on these forums is that a lot of people are relying on the investment manager to also educate them on macro economic conditions, which will always carry a natural bias towards their types of offerings.  

With C or below you probably can't avoid some of it so I'd go with a recency bias, ie anyone who has a long period of time between their last eviction and successful rentals other places will be a safer bet than the guy that just got evicted. 

I'm an agent so maybe I'm biased.

As lenders, we are biased toward leverage for many of the reasons already mentioned. 

If you're looking at Akron, definitely look at Detroit as well.In my opinion (and I'm very biased here with 12-doors in Detroit), there's better growth potential in Detroit.

I'm biased and can provide reasons and data to show that using an agent will protect you, get you more money, less stress and so on.The reality is you can do it yourself, but tenants generally don't cooperate with showings and that causes lots of problems for buyer to access the unit to show, inspections, appraisals etc.