By 2000 even longtime industrial residents like RCA and Campbells Soup were gone.  

I think there IS a religious-based homeless shelter about eight blocks away -- I know they run a soup kitchen.And yet a $7.6M "educational clubhouse" built by a private foundation is going up across the street from my duplex, next to the municipal building/police station/firehouse.The reason that your classification points won't always work is that the kind of activity I'm describing is, in this case, being caused by obvious gentrification next to an obvious lack of it.

Sister may need to thicken her skin a bit if she wants to live in the city.

They are not really investors but speculators.Micheal  its totally apples to Oranges  when i got into this game a century ago or it feels like that.. investors did not buy SFR's per se like they do in droves today.. and from my cheap seats.. all the new construction we build not a single property goes to an investor.. price is the price and you get to the price by cost plus profit and profits are generally 10 to 20% of gross sales prices as your cmpeititon backs into it the same way.its only the last 20 or so years were soup de jour is getting rich only rentals and the easiest way to do that is buy low value SFR.. beginners can t start generally with 2 mil apartment complex.. but they can a 75k SFR.. 

Bottom line though syndication is soup de jour right now especially in the MF space.. will be interesting to see how it all settles out over the next decade..

  (1980 building)  I'm fine with doing comparatively easy, low cost stuff like thickening exterior walls to upgrade insulation (just add shim layer on inside to allow 6" insulation gap) but I'm not going to gut the other 4 units to bring everything up to current fire code just to (re)finish about 10% of the gross sf of the building.   

well you cant learn to ride the bike without skinning some knees..your talking about rehab construction and contractors.. any and I mean anyone doing any volume has had contractors / vendors take advantage of them or flat out steal.. bottom line.. and were it gets even more risky is those with no experience trying to do it from 1000 miles away.. they are not snowflakes by your definition they have just bought into the hype of what is soup de jour .. can it work out OK sure it does all the time can it be a dumpster fire SURE happens all the time.

In the other the neighbor had a chain-link but was a total slob and I didn't want anyone to see his mess, so up went a privacy fence. 

out of the whole S&P 500, here are the companies that had a return >0% in the last month (as of friday's close): Cabot Oil & Gas Corp Clorox Company Gilead Sciences Inc General Mills Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Take-Two Interacti Digital Realty Trust Kroger Company Campbell Soup Company Marketaxess Holdings

By the way, Chicken soup is the remedy I use.