But in the mean time MTR still feels “safe” for this newbie.  

I’m a newbie so please forgive me but the Opex at 24% of the Gross rental income seems low.

Sound advice to us floundering newbies!

I’m a newbie investor {one property} so far in Detroit.

Me and my wife are newbies with real estate and currently owns few properties which we placed in LTR and sTR here in the US.  

from spending my last 10 weeks in miami looking at 500 land deals and making offers and doing underwriting on deals with construction values higher, the playing field above 10 million is so much easier and better and of more interest and separates all the newbies from sophisticated. at my level there is no reason to do small deals. the only multifamily I do under commercial at this point is a triplex we build over and over for out of state investors in Columbus Ohio which is just a unique little niche. tampa I'm not too familiar with zoning or rezoning but columbus is such an old city it has so many mutilfamily properties and rezoning is very easy to get the entitlements for ground up new construction.

Period.I will engage with those looking to advance discussions on bettering wraps for all and not discuss the esoteric people's money ethical concerns of fictitious harms to billion dollar companies - sorry -- just being real here for a bit.Thanks to all -- but I prefer to discuss an improvement to an industry vs the fictional worries of those trying to invent wrongdoings to lenders.Thanks much to all AlanSo due to a couple of in your face sub2  gurus and the potential of newbie investors muddying in the water the attitude has been in the past and is now anti-Sub2 to the most part on bigger Pockets. 

Hello! I have (had?!) a plan to refinance our current mortgage as well as get a HELOC. Apparently our DTI
is too high for the HELOC so we can do a cash out refi but that is less
desirable because it means we canno...

that would be a big help for newbie/starters like me.

Vacancy is probably the least obvious to a newbie.