I'm a brand new member and just found out about Bigger Pockets recently after reading and listening to a variety of books on Real Estate and then coming across the Bigger Pockets podcast on the Pandora application.

I’m currently using my direct mailing system to reach out to a variety of local owners.

I still like real estate because people will always need a place to live, but it’s always good to analyze a variety of different scenarios that can negatively impact your return (e.g. 50% of projected rents?

There is no right answer here and individual tenants will respond in a variety of ways depending on their circumstances.

It's big enough here, too, to have a wide variety to choose from. 

But, you will likely have some long-time residents that will consistently be behind market rates for a variety of reasons.These "rule of thumb" measures can be misleading.  

If you return $100K but it cost you $30K to do the refinance, that's a pretty steep fee.At the end of the day you want to model a variety of scenarios and retain optionality to what will be best for the deal and your investors when the time comes.

This site was recommended to me as a great source of expert advice, so here goes: through a variety of mishaps, the homeowner's insurance for the property I own in Connecticut has lapsed for a bit over 90 days.

I have a variety of investment: rental property, stocks, ETFs, some bonds, and laddered CDs. 

You can find sales comps very easily on Zillow or Redfin, but make sure they are recent you can find rental comps with rentometer and you can see active rental competitors on a variety of sites including Zillow.