In Portland I was talking with a Lux builder and he said it appears the floor on the lux moved off of highs by 10% to get sales this fall ( he has two in contract)  so 1.5  sells for 1.350.. but in those markets that all pure profit he is losing.. but still making money.. 

Also have excellent credit, although that does not seem that important anymore. lol If your net positive cashflow from the rentals, using the post-refi mortgage payment not the current one, is 2.5x your personal housing expense and you have no consumer debt (such as if you pay it all off with refi proceeds), there's a chance it could be done based purely on the rental income, as a Fannie loan.

Agree with you completely- there are similar and better returns out there for an out of state investor - without the headache.Don't get me wrong, There are many experienced local players doing very well in Detroit and I have met a lot of them- but I have become convinced that the kind of things that they are doing, cannot be done long distance.Investing in Detroit I experienced things that were totally off the playing field for me- Just two  examples of many:  a home that was tenanted (by my PM) with what I later discovered  to be convicted criminals with federal tax liens on their assets and no ability whatsoever to pay rent, or a different management company that through pure negligence allowed a cash flowing Sec 8 property to go into abatement , thereby losing the tenant and then simply resigning from the job leaving, me to try and clean up the mess and costing me thousands.

I don't know one person who has invested in these markets that did so on a pure cash-flow basis over the past 5 years.

@Matt Shields ,Quit-claims are regularly used for estate planning and other purposes, and I think it would be tough for a bank to truly clear the "due on transfer" if it were fought, if those were the pure reasons.. 

We might hit 20% of selling price, but that is purely because of rapid appreciation.

You can even go over market in such a scenario because everything after the monthly payment is pure profit.

I strongly agree that the expense in time, gas, and maintenance will far outweigh the advantages of owning the property that you would be much better living on base, if possible, or renting as cheaply as possible until you have the money saved to buy a property purely as an investment property.

I say this because your job is probably too small to warrant the extra expense of hiring a GC who is purely a project coordinator/manager.

Listing agent has been operating in bad faith because when we saw the master bath shower, he said the damage was purely cosmetic.