Schenectady-Albany-Troy-Someone talk me off the ledge

[Joshua Lupo]

I am a long term, buy and hold multi family investor in the upstate NY market and specifically Albany,Schenectady, Troy area. I analyze dozens of deals per day using the following formula. Gross annual rents-25% (vacancy, prop mgmt, repairs, maintenance)- annual taxes- insurance= NOI. If anyone thinks that formula needs tweaking please give me input. Using that formula, I find that around the Troy area I see 8 caps with 1.4 price to rent ratios and in the ball park of 13-15 cash on cash. Albany the numbers are compressed and I see roughly 1-1.2% price to rent, 6-7 caps and around 9-10% cash on cash...And then theres Schenectady...Time and time again I analyze deals and the numbers are cartoonish. For instance, 185k, 5 unit fully rented with 3,600 a month gross rent and $1,470 PIT. We are talking like 34% cash on cash, 13% CAP rate, and literally 3.5% price to rent ratio. I have driven past this place and looked inside and seems overall pretty solid. I am consistently finding 13% cap rates in Schenectady around Union College area and have not come across anything like this in other, NY markets. Yes taxes are egregious thats for sure but when factored into the proformas, deals still pencil out consistently with ludarcis numbers. I get that Schenectady has it's rough patches and not as strong of an economy as Albany but is there something HUGE I am missing or has anyone found the numbers to actually be this good? Anyone actually buy and own in Schenectady?