I agree with what @Brandon Turner said, digging in deeper and finding out why other investors are present in your market is paramount.

The very first piece of advice I always give anyone is take the emotion out of investing.

Since he has only been there 2 weeks, maybe you can dig a little deeper even...has he been a GREAT worker in those 2 weeks?

The stock market is ruled by those with no emotion.  

The key is due diligence and not getting emotionally attached to a property and holding out for the diamonds in the rough.Smaller counties have less competition and therefore typically better deals can be had.John

Nice job and a good lesson that sometimes we have to look a little deeper and closer.

  (25-40k population).I'm ready to go a little deeper into this, but don't know if I should continue my strategy of finding clean, already rented, newer units OR try my hand at flipping to gain some cash flow. 

I happen to know for a fact that the pool is an Emotional Service Pool.

I look forward to interacting with you as I wade in deeper...Cheers

Happy to have found this forum ,as I was about to get taken by zack childress whose course I just bought into but decided to check him out better before going to his seminar and found the blog here about him and saved me from getting any deeper in thankfully .