The new draft zoning ordinance of Gaithersburg, which, for full disclosure, my mom has worked for the planning department my entire life, is out with an interesting wrinkle: they will not only allow ADUs but also have no owner-occupant requirement.

Unfortunately, even though my DTI and credit score was good, the underwriting was not so good because I had gone through a debt consolidation program not too long ago which, as some may know, requires you to stop payment on debt for a period of time.

AND, this deal would require me to deal with tenants of lesser means than DC as well as commercial tenants and I have no experience with those two aspects of landlording. 

Know the elevation, the possibility of a LOMA exemption (flood insurance requirement exemption), the assumability of the seller's flood policy etc.

Your insurance policy will likely have wording that requires you to disclose anything that would materially affect the likelihood of a loss and knob and tube wiring would probably qualify.

You don’t want to find a great deal, perhaps requiring a short timeframe to close, and have to scramble to find money.

They want a local contact for the property which really benefits them not at all and since the role isn't clearly defined they don't require the property manager of record to be a real estate licensee even though to be a property manager within PA requires a license. 

If you are going to most basic route, a rental loan will require roughly 25% down (most lenders won't go below 75k-100k loan amounts).

First, understand that the US Government says there are 16,000,000 vacant properties across the USA.There are websites that provide the addresses and contact information for those properties. This information is not n...

What's changed is the bar of required professionalism has raised, significantly.