@Account Closed good questions, Minh. I am in the escrow for my first 4-flex in Fresno, so definitely I am a newbie here. Just try to help out another fellow. Spreadsheet is just a tool out there for quick analysis. Sometimes it may not apply but numbers don't lie. I totally agree that we are looking at 0.3 to 0.7% for bay area, but it was estimated at -0.15% for this case. Property needs to appreciate at least 10k annually for him to break even.
I agree that Bay area appreciates much faster than other areas due to job growth and good location. However, in this case, we should look at the OP's value of the property (281k for a 2/1 condo). I did a search in realtor.com for all the possible cities in Bay Area such as San Jose, Union City, Newark, Fremont, and Milpitas. The total properties in this price are less than 20 properties. All of these condos had an average of 10% appreciation per year (I looked at the early 2000s sold price to recent sold price and average them out). So if there are no major issues with the house or market crash, OP may break even assuming property appreciates at the rate 10% yearly (and properly lose money to commission when selling the house).
If my house could rent for 5k, I will be happy to sell my house to you for 1% rule :). If my original intention was "buying for rental property" instead of primary resident, I would not buy my house as I barely break even yearly after including average appreciation. As you see, all my sentences start with"if" as I can't predict where the current market is in the market life cycle. Hopefully I can learn more about analyzing the market in the near future.
I agree with your sentence of "everything in life has a price", but "big things often have small beginnings". Most of new investors don't have a luxury to purchase a rental property in a nice location right away due to lack of funds. Of course, some are luckier than others. Lack of fund investors like me will start at an affordable area to learn about RE along with building experience and slowly crawl back into the ideal area in the future. : )
Hope these answer your questions.
