I bought my first investment property (site unseen) with them in April and it was ready for tenants by the end of May. 

It seems like I keep running into a dead end with this question.

I'd invest in New Center/ North End area- both upcoming areas, close to the city (8 mins) and a LOT of investment happening in the area.

Your rental income and expenses would end up on your personal return and could net to zero, but not be deductible (unless you have real estate professional status).Bill does have a good idea about living in a residence for two years, fixing it up, and selling it with the exclusion (up to 500k for a married couple), if that was something you wanted to do.  

Quote from @Fred Boyle III: I had 1 rental property in the past, thought this would be the starter rental to my portfolio ended up being a money pit and drove me away from real estate investing. 

It'll just end up making you and your realtor look bad.

The next year, we lived in an apartment building with two bedrooms, a tiny kitchen/dining/living room, a community bathroom 100 feet down the hall, and community showers two floors down (no elevator) and at the opposite end of the building.

You can definitely do higher end flips in Detroit but I wouldn't recommend starting there.Buying something for $50k-$60k (off-market), putting $20k-$30k into it and then selling for $100k-$110k is a more realistic expectation.

Holders of those loans may never sell their house since the cost to buy a different similar house would be astronomical, and unless a move was absolutely needed, they just wont sell.

Daly proved that this never took place and that all the bank was doing was converting his promissory note (the value) into credit and assigning themselves as beneficiaries to his promissory note and subsequently separating it from the deed.