What is your favorite metric to use when comparing real estate investments

[Michael Zuber]

If you had to pick just one metric to compare real estate investments what would it be?

Let's say you went out on a weekend and saw 10 investments properties.

What metric would you use to rank the 10 choices 1-10 or best to worst?

For the record I use yield some call it cash on cash but I am curious what others might be using to rank their investment options.

[J Scott]

I analyze flips and rentals very differently...

For flips, I'm mostly interested in profit as a percentage of sale price (what would traditionally be called my "margins"). That said, annualized ROI and IRR are both important as well.

For rentals, I look at cash-on-cash return first, and then cash-flow as a close second (actually, it's hard to evaluate one without the other). And IRR is also important.

If I had just ONE metric that I had to use for every deal, it would probably be IRR...