Deal Analysis - Am I doing this wrong?

[Casey Decker]

Hello and thank you for putting up with my rookie question. I'm trying to get a rough idea of if I can even get basic numbers to work before I start looking more seriously into some deals. As I look around the Austin area, it seems there are a few places where I can get a property for the mid $300,000s and charge a little over $2k for rent. With these basic numbers, I'd be losing hundreds a month. Am I looking at this the wrong way? How do so many other people seem to be able to do this? Was it because they purchased before interest and home prices shot up?

Thanks again for helping a newbie out.