How to perform your due diligence on rental property purchases

[Michinori Kaneko]

Hi All,

I've had few acquaintances who has started turnkey investments recently and doing well, and looking into doing a turnkey investment myself.  I live in NY and all the properties here are very expensive, so I am looking out of state to invest.  I want to make sure that I perform enough due diligence before I jump into investing, and I need some help on how to perform the due diligence.  I read a post by Ali Boone somewhere on BP, and came across three factors to consider before jumping into investing, and those were Numbers, Macro Economic of the area, and the quality of PM.

I'm a numbers guy so I like to crunch numbers first to see what kind of cashflow I can generate and what my IRR looks like. All the properties shown on various websites look great with respect to price to rent ratio, but how can I get more detailed stats and perform due diligence on my part? Here are things I would like to incorporate into my cashflow analysis:

1. Rental Income - how do I know if the stated rental income is a reasonable one? How do I know how much the rental income should appreciate or decline on average over time?

2. Property Taxes

3. Home Insurance

4. Property Appreciation/depreciation - how much does real property increase or decrease in value on average in the area?

5. Vacancy Rate

6. Repairs/Maintenance - Is this covered by PM, or does the bill ultimately come to me? I'm new to this so I wasn't sure what's covered in "Property Management". If I'm the one ultimately liable, how much should I anticipate?

7. Insurance

These are the things I factor into my cashflow analysis, but I was wondering if there is a good reliable source to get these stats? If there are other factors I should consider, please let me know.

Aside from cashflow analysis, I'd like to know more about the area.  I suppose I can google these, but factors that I think are important are:

1. Local Population Increase

2. Local Job creation (in my mind, if job creation is greater than population increase, that's also a good thing?)

3. Local School District

4. Local Attractions/Tourism

5. Local Public Transportation.

Let me know if there are any other things I should be paying attention to.

Finally, in regards to quality of PM, is there a good site that has in-depth reviews of PMs? I've been looking at Yelp, but not sure if that's the best source to be checking the quality of PM.  

Thank you all for your help in advance!