Investing in suburbs of NYC

[Hunter Moss]

I am currently under contract on a three family in Midland Park NJ a suburb of NYC. This is going to be a house hack and makes sense for that reason. That being said the 10 other deals in neighboring towns that we wanted to pursue our offers were blown out of the water by other investors. 

Is it simply they're buying all cash? with the cost of money being so cheap ~3% i cant see the disparity being equal (linear). 

THE QUESTION: How do you make money/look at deals in these types of markets where the price of 1-4 families is so high?