Without understanding your market, economic drivers in the community, supply and demand, growth and declining areas, valuation methods and common practices, you can't really choose the best niche, you'll be guessing and may well fail after spending your money chasing pipe dreams.

This applicant sounds like a bad one.... find a way to decline their application if they actually apply.

Our primary criteria is their credit score, not all the little nitpicky details on their report, although having some bad recent stuff on their will cause us to decline them even if their score meets our criteria.

So yea, I would not be surprised we will see price declines of 20%-30% in the coming 12 to 24 mo

Does she think it's smart to wait for rates to hit 6.5% and your property value (along with equity) to decline by 20%? 

It's a mini-Detroit type market, where population declines due to the auto industry's flight have hollowed out the city and left a devastated housing market with more supply and demand.

I'm working with a buyer for one of my properties who just got declined for a mortgage after a 10 week application process.I'm trying to find another lender who will go down to a 600 credit score for an FHA loan.The only one I know right now is Wells Fargo.Does anyone know of any others?

I don't know but I am always more comfortable buying after a large price decline rather than buying after a large price increase.

This should give you good cashflow, protect against going underwater if house prices decline further, spread vacancies (one unit empty is still two paying rent, instead of just one unit), AND you get some tax shelter from the income without needing to donate to a charity.. :)But the biggest advantage is that you now have three units to cashflow to save for the next unit, you do not need to save so much because you are buing at 40k instead of 50k, and your equity is growing faster.

It's all very easy to say that good management is the key but if an area has declining demographics it hits values and rents often so you have no exit strategy.