Thanks for the heads up about the FFREIA, I was just about to start looking to see if Rochester had an association.As to how long I've been studying up on this, I've got a college buddy in Buffalo with a few MF and commercial units who's brain I've been picking for the past few years; however, I only recently started seriously educating myself, maybe 2-4 hours / day over the past few weeks.

Unfortunately, location drives price and if you pay the premium for location because you want to live in a desirable location you can't necessarily add granite and tile and new this and new that without making a marginal return head negative.  

I agree that anyone who thinks we are heading for a crash, 20% or more loss in home value, is just fearful from what happened before. 

@Kyle Mason  When deal making like this, if it is in fact a good deal always keep the variable in the back of your head that someone else is going to come in buy it cash.

As someone else wrote, more and more finance companies are springing up so if you are headed toward new homes you may not need anything else.

@Bob Malecki I appreciate the heads up.  

I know you wont be able to predict where you will be getting orders to next but if you do head into a more expensive appreciation based market I think that would be a better area to us your VA loan in.

@Cody Ringler You got really solid advice from @Richie Thomas - if you want to talk to a bunch of people who specialize in STRs, head over to the Short Term and Vacation Rental Forum and there are a lot of people happy to lend their opinion.

I'm in no hurry, I'm heading to the penthouse.

Our location would not be considered a vacation area, but we tend to be a pitstop for folks traveling in and out of LA... normally related to flying out of LAX or headed up to Big Sur.