Because the loans are not held in the originators balance sheet post closing, risk for the lender is minimized and because of that you get attractive terms such as long loan term (10  years), leverage as high as 75%, fixed rate, non recourse financing and CMBS lenders are also open to cash out refinances and lending in secondary and tertiary market .

Doing this gave them equity in the duplexes for refinance and on the 6 unit being rehabbed and rented made it more attractive for a commercial lender to ok.  

Also, you will likely be unable to attract high quality tenants to this property. 

Im looking for an area within 2 hours that has a decent economy and the pricing is attractive enough to make good returns. 

You need a B+/A- property in a good school district/attractive location at a lower than market price.  

It was a short sale at a very attractive price and allowed us to get into real estate investing (outside our AirBnB unit and house hack) for under $20,000 cash out of pocket in 2017.

Doing rehab one unit at a time will be hard; if you are trying to attract better, higher paying tenant they may not want to rub elbows with your current tenants.

Renters may attract low quality people into the neighborhoods and then property values start dropping.

I think there’s money to be made but I also think you need to know the market for it and how to attract new people to it.  

You raise a good point and I'll keep that in mind.I was attracted to Vegas because it's close to SoCal but significantly cheaper and more landlord-friendly.I've been finding it very difficult to find SFRs that will cash-flow in Vegas after mortgage and expenses (haven't looked for too long), so I'm going to start looking at other places around the country.Thanks,