DH and I almost bought a house in an "up and coming" part of town. Great location- close to the mountains and downtown- but super shady with pockets of nice. It's the old bad part of town, and the city has been using eminent domain to take out some of the bad sections for redevelopment. So basically you have nice, gated communities across the street from check cashing places and mobile home parks. No good restaurants, lack of grocery stores, etc. But, the location is great and you can get a house for really cheap. If you trust the neighborhood will continue to improve, who knows, in 10 years or so, you may have a pretty good investment.
Well, they found the body of a 17 year girl who was beaten to death not that far away from where we were looking. And a friend of mine lives down there and just has horror stories of the neighbors, even though her house is super nice. I can't help but feel that we so dodged a bullet by not moving there!