When I represent a buyer on the retail side, the main factors are budget ($250K means Brockton, not Wellesley), commuting options (highways, commuter rail, commuter boat), Schools (refer to www.GreatSchools.org) and crime (I use Trulia's crime heat maps).For investors, it's a lot more about where the investor wants to be. 

There's a good amount of takeaways here, but my main action item is to continue to research different regions on my own. 

We have our investment criteria and if we can underwrite at/near the investment criteria (given our market research - mainly centered around growth and employment outlooks), then we go ahead with a deeper analysis/LOI. 

We mainly look for a monthly cash flow of $250 or higher with a CoC return of 12% or better but we do deviate if one is substantially high while the other metric is lower.

My main concern right now is being inexperienced and jumping into a market like Dallas which is very very hot right now.

I know how frustrating it can be to have a bad property manager, it was the main reason I wanted to get into managing.

Main Home: My thoughts were that they have breached the contract by not providing the keys or allowing entry to the property with proper notice.

FHA is attractive because of the low down payment but PMI will kill your profit for a year before you can refinance so I am gearing towards conventional loans for my first deal.

One of the main reasons I chose my brokerage is how much they work with investors. 

My credit which is usually in the mid to upper 700s in the upper 600s right now due to the new card and mainly the debt utilization rate I presume.