My first property in Cincinatti cash flows for $495/month NOI after monthly HOA fees & property management are subtracted.

Sometimes the landlord was sympathetic, and realized a painful eviction was coming...sometimes the Soldier moved out and paid a hefty fee to break the lease.  

But you can at least save the PM fee by managing yourself since you live there.

Just to throw out a property for example:100k Purchase price10k in repairs130k ARV1300/month rent1313/yr taxes550/yr flood insurance est800/yr insurance est10% management fee...

I was a little surprised how much the operating costs really are when I try and project what I'll need in 10 years to not have to pay out of pocket for big expenses plus the basic outflow (lawn, lic fees, termite inspections, insurance, taxes...)Here's my question, the property nets 1500 per month after I pull everything out.

Final approval will ultimately be up to the investor.There are other/additional factors as well.

You probably will have to go to mediation and if he has a smart lawyer will file lis pendens on property if mediation doesn't work out with a ton of legal fees

If you're talking owner occupied, meaning you're going to live there, it seems like choosing between those two areas is the primary consideration, then once you've picked that market you can dive down to consider specific properties.For your own personal residence, usually other life factors such as proximity to your place of employment and family considerations (spouse/partner, children, parents/extended family) are even more important than real estate investment.

I hesitate to call the current market a bubble - there's just too much up in the air to really see what's what, and while RE is a big part of the general health and status of the economy, there are a number of other factors that determine what / when / how the correction happens.The bigger they are, the harder they fall, so unless we (collectively as a society) really have our crap together (which we don't), when we eventually do go down I think it's gonna be a doozy. 

There is a calculation performed each year based on the account value and an age factor (perhaps yours, perhaps the deceased original account holder depending on certain variables).