Yes, there are podcasts that mention avoiding high crime areas, but there are also podcasts where people specifically work in areas that most people avoid... primarily for the reason that most people avoid it, and they have no issue with it.If you are planning on managing the property yourself, then you need to know the kind of tenants you want to have, and that will help you narrow down which kind of neighborhoods you want to concentrate on.

But in west Suffolk County, you can purchase a rental property for a reasonable price, reasonable taxes (by NY standards), and you can still fetch a strong rental income because you're close to Nassau County which has high salary earners. 

So far they have been easy to work with, are offering competitive rent, and the sample lease they shared looks reasonable (I am not an attorney). 

If for some reason you really have to get this property, it might be easiest to pursue a master lease with the owner, or a lease purchase, or contract for deed type transaction, and then you can sub-lease the property. 

I've changed that to $1m/month of rent roll (so I have a reason to keep going). 

So it would stand to reason that there is some opportunity to do something (some degree of improvements) to the older/existing MF properties out there. 

@Rick Thompson in general the reason to use Heloc and pay cash is to get a better deal by removing financing contingency and being able to close quickly.

It looks interesting (mainly SFR) from a pure numbers standpoint, but that alone is not a reason to invest. 

From an accounting perspective it seems to be working ok, but is there any reason to have one bank account per property?

I will tell you the number 1 reason, and it has nothing to do with trust.