Focus on homes that have capital improvements over cosmetic ones. 

For the moment, it's good enough that the home value and rent value continue to increase with everything else in Lakewood, but is this the peak?

Hi everybody, I'm stressing over picking a color for my rental house.  

I wasn't worried about going over budget as I have used this contractor like 20 times. 

Example, the tenant has a guest over and there is a leak that I was not made aware of.

In the end, I prefer the long-term rental route with a good tenant though and over time when I start traveling for extended periods again, I will likely shift them back to long-term.I personally, would not purchase a property for the sole purpose of being a vacation rental - it's just not part of my investment strategy though, I have met people who do quite well with that model. 

I too want to continue accumulating rental real estate.

Your input has reinforced my own observations of the DC metro market over the past three months.

I have sold a bit over 50 million of the northside 2-4 units so seen lots of day 1 analysis vs long term, they tend to not look great on paper in year 1 but rents ramp up each year and they run under 3% vacancy here so actually bring high returns over the long run.

They have too many rules that they put OVER the normal underwriting with most loan types.