Be cautious of cities that aren't proactive in job attraction; too much growth can lead to strict building regulations, affecting housing value.Other Factors- Favor cities with a crime index that has consistently decreased over a decade.- For appreciation, I look for a minimum of 2.5% YoY growth in median house values over the past 20 years but I don't use this explicitly in calculations.

Depends on if you want to owner occupy the next one or use it strictly as an investment.

Rent control is another strong factor as many cities have super strict rent control for duplexes and up with Oakland and San Francisco leading the way.

Purchase price: $79,999 Cash invested: $15,000 First purchased as a house hack.Now it's strictly rental since I moved.

Ademola,In California, you're allowed to evict a tenant in order to move into a unit of a building you own.LA is pretty strict about how to go about doing this.

With the free data sites, you do need to be extra careful, because that is almost strictly algorithm with only a couple months of actual data.

With the newly passed lead laws, the state seems to be getting much more strict about demanding landlords have a Certificate of Conformance for lead based paint issues on both the inside and outside of the house.

Be cautious about legal and ethical considerations in Virginia, as wholesaling involves strict guidelines.

Many policies have exclusions for running a business on the property and to me a very strict interpretation of that is renting out a unit.

In my mind until they are lost they are all pre foreclosure.. when I chased these in earnest before the very strict  laws were put into place to make this activity very dicy we bought all of ours within 24 hours to 5 days of the actual sale at the steps. that's were you got the good deals.. if your mailing or contacting them with just the notice of default your going to not do very well at all.. they are not properly motivated at that point and you will waste a ton of time and money chasing those deals Along with most of these will have very little equity if any..