Does the neighborhood seem pleasant, do you feel safe, would you feel comfortable with your wife/kids/family walking around there at night? 

The best part is those tend to be non-recourse against you, the rate is fixed, and the length of loan term is 10 years or longer which helps protect against interest rate shock with a five year loan.Chase bank was mentioned but I have called them before here locally for another client and they like only a select few markets and really large loans.

Of course it can, but it has been down and out for so long, at least the people there won't be shocked when services get cut, unlike residents of some other cities.

:shock:

This is a good post - I started off on BP answering a lot of questions related to this matter and it was shocking to see all the bad information coming from investors who had already consummated transactions. 

Culture shock, maybe?

I see investor flock to Morgan Hill and are shocked how expensive homes are there also. 

My parents live in Pleasant Hill and there was a guy who was buying houses in the area for around $700k and flipping them for around 1.2Million.

But I'm in the Cleveland area and I was shocked to see just how many companies there are.

It's nice to know w/data how you can do during economic shocks.