A heavy rehab property that wouldn't qualify for conventional financing would limit the pool of buyers to cash buyers (or those taking on non conventional loan products-one flipper at a closing had a good relationship with a smaller local bank who provided financing in a portfolio loan-mortgage they held in house and didn't plan to sell to Fannie/Freddie). 

If you go the heavy renovation route, YOUR BIGGEST PROBLEM HERE IS NOT THE MONEY.

The heavy lifting is done by other properties, not by me.2.For long-term I try to stay in the 3bed 2bath and 4bed 3bath range.

I have some heavy hitters at my brokerage.

Very difficult to find new construction financing without existing experience and/or heavy renovation experience.  

@Jay Hinrichs  do you think the hard crash in Oregon was due to the heavy reliance on timber and hasn't Oregon gotten a bit more diversified??  

For example, he's the one that drives to the property when an alarm goes off at 2am, he'll go to auctions and bid for me, he does some basic handyman work (hanging mini-blinds, replacing outlets, etc) and when we're staging a property, he gets to move the heavy furniture...

When I first started I put heavy weighting in finding a good PM and even more so than the market itself. 

Today its arguably an appreciation market only but you can create cashflow by doing forced value adds with heavy lifts, value add's to force cashflow out of it.

I think capitalizing on the heavy lifting completed when I bought the property makes MORE SENSE than renting it out watching it get torn up as a rental.