Newbie from Orlando, Florida

[Jon Rowe]

Total newbie to real estate investing.  Engineer by day, so I am hoping math skills will be helpful for all the analysis I've been seeing.  My current goal is to buy a home and rent it out.  Looking forward to learning from this group!

[O'brian R.]

Welcome @Jon Rowe! I'm also an engineer. Yes the math skills do come in handy. A lot of real estate books don't go too heavy into calculations, but if you're like me you'll really appreciate Frank Gallinelli's book, What Every Real Estate Investor Needs to Know About Cash Flow ...And 36 Other Key Financial Measures. 

A mouthful of a title I know. This book goes into just about every real estate financial equation you may come across and is great for a new investor. My recommendation is to read the book and then set up a simple spreadsheet where you can start to analyze deals as you come across them. You'll pick things up pretty quickly. Then also add little metrics like the 50% rule and 1 or 2% rules as rules of thumb. If you don't want to start with making your own tool (though I recommend you do since you learn much more that way), J Scott has a great free calculator that you can download here: 

http://www.biggerpockets.com/files/user/JasonScott/file/20-sfh-rental-analysis