Also, I don't plan on flipping it. the plan was to do a buy and hold unless a flip could produce substantial gains.

I have been advised before that offers from large national brokers are sometimes not taken as seriously as a local well respected mortgage company/ bank, as national banks sometimes have substantial delays that more local banks/ brokers can push through. 

Cash flow can be tough at today's prices and cities that have very low buy in often have surprisingly high property taxes as a percentage of overall operating expense, which eats into your cashflow pretty substantially (Toledo OH, for example).

The only caveat to doing this is ensuring mortgage rates are low so your monthly payment does not increase substantially. 

That is substantial amount of needed repairs.

There was a big change in second homes, but most likely is that rates are up substantially in last month.

My cost to get there is substantially lower (almost non-existent by comparison) too.

Appraisers do consider rental income when determining the value of the property, but a month is not nearly substantial enough to account for.

We have a ton of data on single family home buyers (and prospective single family home buyers), but nothing on apartment dwellers.I've reached out to the state housing authority, but if anyone has data (even anectodical is fine) or good resources, it would be appreciated.I'm hesitant to use nationwide, or even statewide data, because the majority of apartments are in the urban core, and I feel our demographics may be substantially different since we are an hour outside the urban core.

Meanwhile prices have gone up substantially and now the quotes to build this small dwelling are 450k (or 350k without materials).