If it's in an area where owners want to live and you're competing with buyers that create an emotional attachment to a home (and thus will pay for it) it can be tough to find what you're looking for.  

@David: Good point about not letting emotions get in the way (although hard to persuade wife to potentially move away from our current house given the hassle for her hahaha).

And then there's the annual rent increase, which can be substantial if you're not living in a rent controlled unit (like when my rent went up $200 after they did some major upgrades throughout the [224 unit] property including a new redwood deck for my unit). 

Hi @Rae Edwards,If your employer instructs you to leave the area/country for a while or you lose your job, that isn't something you could reasonably control or anticipate, so you're fine. :)The people that get jammed up, for the most part, are the ones that flagrantly never "intended" to live there, and never moved in at all.

Be in control of what is happening.  

Learn the skills to control real estate first without the need of a large amount of money.

My goal of course is to get it as cheap as possible and even though this may be a business for the seller, they still may be driven in part by emotion and their desire to not lose money on the deal.

To my knowledge, SFRs don't have rent control in New York, which is a plus.

I can outsource the hospitality to someone who can do it right.To anyone considering AirBnB, I would think very carefully about the serious time commitment it is and the lack of control over when those responsibilities arise.  

The property is townhouse sharing walls with neighbors, now neighbor said they also have cockroaches.The pest control company said that Cockroaches are in-door ones, brought by residents.