I am very familiar with the market.

@Ryan Tortorich You are missing an important point.....in most states, by law, he legally also becomes your agent by default and has a legal liability, along with the extra work that Will come along with that as you are not an experienc d agent familiar with all the local procedures, etc.  

I am not familiar with overlays - I will check out your link to get more info.

I am very familiar with Cypress as I lived there for 10 years before just moving.

I am not totally comfortable just picking one out of thin air, so I would love your feedback on who you use or if you are a lender what your terms are.I have seen and reached out to a couple private lenders mentioned on the boards already.The property I am looking at is in my own neighborhood, so I am very familiar with them.

Familiarize yourself with prices everywhere.

They should serve as rough guidelines only and make sure you know how the different letter grades are defined by the person using them.2) Ideally, you're making this determination about areas where you have some familiarity and first hand knowledge.

Pro: Higher day one cash faux.Con: You need to hop on a plane (or long car drive) to visit your property, which leads to ...Con: You are less familiar with the market.Con: You are 100% dependent on complete strangers to make or break your investment for you and keep your best financial interests at heart above their own.Con: Can't easily verify work is being completed in a quality or timely manner.Con: If problems do arise, it will take you longer to find out and they will grow larger in that time.Con: If something goes wrong that your team can't fix (or in all likelyhood caused) then it is harder to for you to step in to fix it, stabilize the asset, and recover.Con: Lower appreciation and rent growth ... if you think this is speculative and not consistent, then review the last 50 years of price trends in the market you are in now vs the out of state market you are considering.Con: Lower tenant quality.

I am not familiar with the Western NY FC timeframes - hopefully they are much faster than the rest of NY :)

I'm new to personal real estate investing, but have familiarity with the field via my full time job (commercial construction banker) as well as study I've done on the side (books, podcasts, etc.).