So you want to make sure that everything is examined before committing to anything. 

@Phil Hartten I disagree with @Sam Shueh.

Arturo Borges if you have a hard time getting in touch with the particular municipality and the correct contact, I sometimes go to the building department very first thing and wait to talk to the plans examiner or permit technician (especially if it has been in process for a few weeks)

(Not that I disagree those are strong markets but would love to hear your "why")

I am not disagreeing the flipping is faster than BRRRR. 

The article made me stop and examine if I was really working on my business or in my business.

I have to disagree a little with @Josh Caldwell on this.

It is important to be able to analyze the trailing 12 month financial statement of a property and take a deeper look at the loss to lease by examining the rent roll.Ideally, you are lucky enough to have an excel version of the rent roll provided to you by the broker or the owner you are interacting with on your potential acquisition (or.. if you or someone you know is developing a character recognition software that is able to read a PDF version of a rent roll and convert it to a nice, clean excel version please let me know!).

I would disagree with the above suggestion for many reasons.

Beware there are quite a few older (1960s - 1980s), small multis (8 - 20 units) on the market recently which look like values until you really examine the operating costs in light of the current (and potential) tenant populations.