.- sounds like you have  already  figured out  what you should do .....also  - fyi  regarding  any  seller  credits  you can  obtian ....if you believe that you  will sell the property /  refinance the loan or  possibly pay it off in short term - dont use the seller provided  concession to buy rate down -  ask for the  price to  be  decreased  ...if you think you will carry this loan for a longer period - consider the  buy down  rate/ fee options 

I like the concept of increasing my applicant pool and decreasing my vacancy period.

It would be a temporary imbalance of supply and demand and if that's the case I would guess in a month or two your competition on REO's would dramatically decrease.

All of the new development here is high end apartments and condos, so there is growing demand and decreasing supply in the mid-level rent and single family rental market.

Decreasing crime indexLike I said there are a bunch of other criteria you can and should look at depending on your strategy.

Population size - Is that area's population increasing or decreasing in size? 

Data from CoStar/Apartments.com shows that there was a temporary 30 to 45 day decrease in asking rents when the pandemic first hit which soon reversed in May 2020.

The rehab took longer than expected, rates went up, and values decreased slightly since I bought it.

@Quinn DudekInstead of forcing appreciation through rehabbing, you could force appreciation through increasing NOI, ie increasing revenue or decreasing expenses.You could also look at using creative financing.

A 30-year amortization would decrease your monthly mortgage expense a little bit (though the higher interest rate will also increase it, so you'd have to factor those things to see if they make a difference).