First Rental Property

[Nilesh Kharche]

I have been going through many knowledgable posts about buying your first Rental property. I fairly understand the analysis calculations and am thankful to all who take the time to write the posts and replies helping investors along their journey. Now, when I look for properties on Zillow, some places have a lot of properties up for rent vs some that have less properties up for rent. My question is: Do you pick an area with more properties for rent on market ? That would invite more competition as well, I assume. OR Do you go for an area with less properties for rent on the market? This could be construed as more people prefer owning there than renting leading to higher vacancy rate. OR Somewhere in the middle of the above extremes. If so, its proving difficult to gage that right balance owing to the fact that I cannot get to recent rental comps. I would appreciate any insight into the above queries which is probably making me overthink a decision. P.S. I’m looking in NJ and focussing on nearby a transit station for my first, reachable to me within a 30-45 minute drive from princeton.