Here are some examples: (1) one of my clients buys 25 - 30 properties a month, he would never pay attention to a ranking on markets because he knows the towns he buys in, which has helped make him very successful (he's worth $20 - $25M USD), (2) my partner did some preliminary work for a hedge fun, they were looking to drop tens of millions of dollars - for them market trends mattered a lot because of the amount of capital they were deploying and the time horizon of the investments  I realize that I am not answering your question, but I hope that the above is useful as a frame work.

I think that meeting new people and building connections is one of the best ways to expand your horizons, so that sounds great!

With a 25+ year horizon, it's virtually zero-risk as well.Investing in property takes significantly more effort and has quite a bit more risk, but as a result, the returns can be a lot higher. 4% appreciation feels pretty high to me, but having someone else pay down your mortgage while also creating cash flow is incredibly powerful.

Some have a 90 day delivery time horizon and some are 6-9 months out. 

Well, the day of reckoning is on the horizon.

Lots of opportunities on the horizon if you know what you are looking for.

I am currently an avail user but nestegg has some great things on the horizon especially for maintenance and finding/paying vendors. 

But I will say "drawdowns" depend on the length of holding for the down payment, in other words what's the time horizon?

Rates are likely only going to go up over a longer time horizon like that, so it's not a bad idea to lock in.

The drawback of cap rate is that the metric only looks at EBITDA over All In at a point in time but not account for the whole investment horizon.