I almost purchased a two family with 2700 square feet seven years back for ~$900k - now that same home is probably worth at least $2mm BEFORE the coming "Amazon effect"second choice would be a non-landmarked 2-3 family house not more than .5 mile away from the 7 train. third choice a smaller multi-family building. cap rates will be low in 4% range but if you can hold it for 5-10 years with adequate reserves and money to upgrade, you will do wellhttps://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Queens-New-Y...https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Queens-New-Y...fourth choicepre-war landmarked coop apartments in Jackson Heights. not an investment per se because you usually can't rent these out but if are an owner-occupant, these will do great. fifth choicea condo in LIC - these are already expensive and you'll probably have negative yield but IRR will be fine over a 5-10 year holdAs happy as I am for the Queens news, I was even more thrilled to hear about Nashville because it is the one and only place I have been out of state investing for the past four years!

. $1700 NOI/month - $2149mortgage = -$449 (negative cashflow after I pay my mortgage)-$449 - 268PMI = -$717 (negative cashflow with PMI)From this perspective, the real-estate doesn't look like a good investment, although property depreciation and tax losses would offset some of these losses in the first few years. 

I'm buying a flip with a pellet boiler, I was thinking it may be a negative even though it's 3 years old. 

@John Bastidas I’ve dealt with these, but typically the county/city won’t reduce the fines (to usually less than 10%) until After the violations are corrected....which makes it somewhat of a gamble for the buyer.IF they can get the fines reduced and paid off, and the lien removed, prior to your closing....no problem.

There are a lot of local nuances that only a local attorney would know, plus the fees are usually not high enough for an out of state attorney to even take the file.

So the way most of us do this is we buy a property at a discount, usually one in disrepair, then we fix it, then I can refinance the 85% of the ARV. 

That is not uncommon when paying something online there is usually a "service fee" for just that reason.

I see most of the growth inside the beltway,  but because of the dynamics places like Woodbridge and Stafford and Fredericksburg will see secondary growth as the usual residents get priced out. 

But as a return on the value of the asset it's usually a horrible rate of return. 

That interest rate is killing you before you refinance, and is almost single-handedly the reason you are negative cash flowing.