To start, the numbers:3 bedroom, 1.5 bath 1700 sq foot brick SFH with bonus room.Purchase Price: $59kAppraisal: $105k as is with estimated $124k after rehab.Renovation budget: $20k.Renovations include: new flooring in bonus room, kitchen and baths. total renovation of bathrooms, new cabinets, crown molding (to cover bad drywall job by previous owner), buff hard woods, paint exterior, paint interior, remove awning, remove side door and seal up, fix low spot in kitchen floor, and remove the non-permitted fire place.Estimated Rent: Initially I budgeted $950 per month based on another rental I own in a similar location, but  two houses on the same block were recently rented for $1200+.

Either way - they spend 3/4 of their time in the north - clear where they would rather be.WA - VERY high cost of livingWY - "north" country / wild wild westSD - What does that state have to offer?

You can look at rural areas, but if you plan on utilizing property managers and taking out a loan to purchase it, make sure the cap rate and your budget afford you the actual cash flow you are aiming for. 

I purchased the property for $150,000 in Oct'2015 and spend the winter of that year renovating it from it's dungy 1950's look to a traditional/modern lake house.

I would love to hire an architect and have a site plan/ review completely laid out and tied up in a pretty little package but that sounds like money that I either don't have or am not willing to spend at this time.

When I represent a buyer on the retail side, the main factors are budget ($250K means Brockton, not Wellesley), commuting options (highways, commuter rail, commuter boat), Schools (refer to www.GreatSchools.org) and crime (I use Trulia's crime heat maps).For investors, it's a lot more about where the investor wants to be. 

Just starting out I encourage you to spend some time figuring out your WHY.

Keep in mind that those of us who've found a great contractor had to spend many years kissing a lot of toads and we're not so free to give out those names, as they'd otherwise get too busy with other investor's projects to keep working for us. 

(And extrapolating, try to make sure that to increase its value to full ARV, you only need to spend 70% or less of the extra value you're hoping to increase it by.

I think telling them you might use them in the future but provide all of this free crap today is a waste of time.Any smart commercial broker will not spend time on such things.Why not just pay for a report or send them a nice gift card to the restaurant of their choice?