Perhaps there will be no change but at least you may have better tenants, you may have created a way to have a better rapport with the people living there.6. consider what you will need to do beyond #5. so as to be able to populate the place with good tenants.7. meet with the lender (referred by family and or friends) and explain what you're proposing to do.

As for tenant population, I prefer professionals but you might like students...I have never evicted anyone, but I would have no qualms because there are plenty of rentals cheaper than mine and I try to screen out anyone who would be better off renting a cheaper place even though they think they would rather pay up for mine.

Any large building with a usage change has a large impact on a downtown, especially if its a small population.  

In my opinion @Brodyn Beauchat you should only be investing in areas with a growing population and with house prices over 90k.

CURB APPEAL: I plan to do a little here but it does back up to some prairie preservation land which is very beautifulGROWING AREA: populating and job growth has been fairly steady.

For those who think Austin is cooling off.....think again.  11th largest city in the nation that is expected to double in population in the next 15-20 years appears to be acting as expected. 

Your market is much smaller than the one I am looking at (population 90k) however exact same issue, so its all relative.

Population growth, 2.

My strategy so far has been looking up counties with the fastest growing populations, best schools, and also checking Listsource.com for zip codes with recently sold Absentee owned properties (trick I learned from Anson Young's Finding and Funding Great Deals).

That which concerns us is that it is sparsely populated.