I look at the properties on the MLS occasionally and scratch my head most times.  

Any loan is going to be made on the basis of LTV, it's just a matter of how the "V" is established.In a typical bank loan, V is considered the lower of purchase price or appraisal, where the appraisal is completed on an "as is" basis (no assumed repairs).In a hard money loan (or occasionally a rehab loan with a bank, but these are getting very scarce), V will be based on a "subject to" appraisal, or what the home will be worth when renovated in a manner to bring it into the top tier of condition for that retail market.Hard money lenders might use the expression Loan-to-Cost (LTC) as well, which reflects the total investment that will be made in the property (purchase price + rehab costs).So a hard money lender might say "we'll loan up to 65% ARV, but no more than 90% LTV/LTC".

However, most of my family is in West Michigan, so I will be making trips home occasionally.

I occasionally have some off market opportunities, are you interested in more deals?"  

Occasional jems, but not often and the jems are not easy to find and still involve a fair amount of work to profit. 

The hot property was marked on Redfin.com: you occasionally will see a red "hot" word on a property, telling you that based on the redfin statistics, the property is a "hot property" and will be sold in XX days.

Luckily, while doing my own research, I found out that my local REIA group (which I joined in January of this year) travels to Indy occasionally to look at properties and meet other power team members that they've acquired throughout the years.

Also, I am going to be meeting with a banker to talk about what they want to see in terms of financials when it comes time to apply for a future loan.If anyone here happens to be from the DC or Baltimore area, and is open to the occasional meeting for mentoring purposes, I would be interested in that, and I would certainly buy you dinner.

They had nothing but disdain for their landlord, who they said was the most useless flake ever, and only ever came by to camp out in the basements with his kids and occasionally sail.

I am in the process of selling a seattle duplex I own and the proceeds from that will be used to reinvest in a larger multifamily property in a secondary market in the greater puget sound area;  I want to get out of seattle market in the long term,   but I'm pretty established now with negligible debt and market-ish rates so I can weather some more bureaucracy and occasional losses from having to comply with some of this stuff if I have to.Even though we are seeing landlord/tenant "reform" at the state level now and I'm guessing will likely see a statewide rent control bill similar to oregons next session I would prefer to invest locally so I can visit my assets on a fairly regular basis,  even if it takes a couple hours instead of 15 minutes to drive there thats way better than cross country for me.