That average usage is helpful for a benchmark.

I am not sure what  benchmark other landlords use.In my experience, If they are unable to pay all of the rent until the middle of the month.

There's a company, Wegowise (based in MA), that is all about utility tracking and benchmarks for rentals.

A very good benchmark in Chicago and suburbs is a 25% return on cash invested.

Better yet, make a few appointments and tour similar properties, so you know where the benchmark is for you.

But, I'm concerned about that much work, which means that much risk and money I need to find, may be being clouded by the idea of convenience.So, my question is: Does anyone here have benchmarks or flags when they say, "I'm to going to much on emotion and making to many trade offs."?

Your proposed business plan, your strategy sounds fine, but you need to establish bench marks as to the performance you require out of your property, can't expect one unit to give you $1,200 a month without considering the property type, potential rents, area and value.Your first step is to actually learn real estate, not investor or operator strategies of dealing in real estate.

You typically plug in your opportunity cost of return on a comparable investment as benchmark in the calculation of IRR.

Read what the market says is profitable, and decide if you want to invest there, maybe you don't also, how realistic is $300/month cash flow, and at what risk level does it require. that's a HIGH benchmark for unit cashflow imo, but it also leaves out tons of calculations.

For a 48 unit property, we would base expenses on benchmarks for our market.