And yes, be prepared to paint the cabinets frequently  After a few tenants, those cabinets will probably have to be replaced.  

On top of that the units required frequent 'resetting' to provide hot water. 

Land entitlement is a big business, largely due to all of the legalities involved and the complexity of getting raw land into a shovel-ready condition.Something to bear in mind - big investors frequently do not have all of the money they need to do their deals.

A lot of good people there, and Wholesaling is a frequent topic.

We actually have a pretty vibrant community of people who frequent the meetups locally.

i use to live in ocean shores so went through tacoma pretty frequently, my opinion is you would have high vacancy rates, but maybe being near the uni you might get parents and students visiting ect ect... i would look on airbnb,vrbo and homeaway and see what listings look like in the area in terms of totals reviews and calendars, also consider buying a couple zipcode analysis from airdna.co

Frequently, there's just not enough data, so I slowly push out the distance and time frame.I've had a few cases lately where I've had to go 18 months and a full mile. 

Further, frequently I hear about peoples' bad experiences with agents, claiming they felt like their agent pressured or advised them to do something which they felt wasn't in their best interests, but would get the agent's commission paid quicker.

@Elijah White, the issues you are seeing are common, in that you will see them, but not frequent.

Frequently it is multiple line items for the various bad hurricane years.