@James Gleeson  I really like Grant Cardone, but he is giving people terrible advice to not buy a home. 

-I understand what you are saying re numbers (not really "understand" per se because clearly you are a numbers whiz and I am terrible at them) of this 'investment' being not as good as others- and you are correct, these people are not into "REI" per se; they just want to build wealth and keep house 1 and live in house 2, as opposed to just sell a great house to be in a new house.

Good systems (website, software, gate, boots on the ground) and it's not terribly difficult.

Cons: property management has been unimpressive to date. not terrible but definitely not great.

Yes, $1,800 per month on a $485K asset is a terrible 4.4% return. and you haven't factored in vacancy or repairs. 

Rents are obnoxious for terrible properties.

Unfortunately, for your sake and the community's sake I feel like I should say that we had a terrible experience with Voepel and would not recommend anyone hire them as their PM. 

The numbers have to make sense and in larger MF there have been a lot of terrible deals w/ syndicators putting up lofty projections on returns and low financing so I believe there will be opportunities in that market. 

I did a great deal of REO work in 43206 back in 2007-2009 and found that there were many halfway decent neighborhoods, ones that wouldn't be too terrible to own rentals in.

The other 20% are making lateral moves into my properties because I tend to remodel them to a higher standard and folks are sick of slum lords.Are there still terrible areas that resemble war zones?