I had always been taught not to mess with short sales so I stayed away from them.

Is it best to stay away from these neighborhoods, no matter how nice the property is?

You get to stay where you're at, get another property before October, and still have some savings leftover(hopefully).

The last time we did this, the tenant gave his notice, looked around at other units for a while and decided to stay.

From what we've seen, I'd recommend staying away from the Direct Loans (IE just dealing with the Govmnet) they can tack on subsidies to those loans and they will sell this as a great benefit to you to lower your payment, but you'll have to pay those back when you sell and maybe incur pre-payoff penalties if you flip the property.

The maintenance fees have not substantially increased in 4 years and again, rents have stayed high.Just consider the 50% rule, which you can read about here on BP.

There isn't a true "best way", but you should explain your situation a little more (are you going to finance or buy with cash, do you plan on staying in the town long, etc) and you should probably get some pretty good answers from the folks around here!

@Brian Gibbons So with lease option assignments do you stay hands on with the TB until the end of their lease? 

I have done this numerous times with title companies but some of these real estate attorney's in Northern New Jersey don't understand creative real estate investing.

I'm in Dallas too, hope to see you around the forums and we have a meet up group....so stay tuned for future meetings.