Houses are rather cheap in the areas I plan to invest and with my savings/future salary I plan on purchasing a few in the next year to renovate and rent out, which should be very possible due to the said low cost of homes in the area/decent salary I should command after graduation, (which will be much better than my current).

But, unfortunately, it looks like the county doesn't provide the data for escrow and servicing companies, so it may be difficult to get the search granularity that you are looking for. http://www.co.st-clair.il.us/departments/treasurer/Pages/escrow.aspxIf you were in Wake county NC I could tell you using simple linux commands from normalized county data that there are only 639 quads in the county, almost all (599) in Raleigh.

There is a point where upgrades and extras won't command higher rent due to the other rents in the market.

We acquired it just under market, but we considered this a heck of a deal because it was turnkey and it is located in a very highly desired neighborhood (Cotuit) where weekly rentals in the peak season (June-August) command upwards of $2,000-$2,500 per week for our type of property.In terms of financing, we have a family friend on the Cape who was able to approve us in about an hour with our strong income and credit history.

@Rick Baggenstoss that is a great bullet point list of commandments, and worth reiterating: - do not over leverage - have reasonable cash flows - moderated risk with portfolio strategy and/or high quality properties - diversify income streams into related businesses and strategies - effectively predict or react as the market changes In my first venture at REI, I violated each of them, at one time or another.

SFH on the other hand, you can usually command more rent but you have more hard costs to account for as well as maintenance.

Hire a couple of kids to come at night and make strange sounds...get people talking about it.Then contact the producer of Ghost Hunters or Dead Files and have them do a feature show on it.Then you change it from being a "house where someone was murdered..." into "house that was featured on TV..." and command TOP TOP dollars.

I want to do single family properties, but maybe move into multi-family units one day.I was referred here by a book "10 Commandments for Real Estate Investors" by Frank Gallinelli.I was impressed by Ely Preston's books, but it seemed very hyped, so I am continuing to read what I can about investing in all areas real estate and even the market.

I figure it would make it that much easier to rent, and could maybe even command a premium because of it.

How can you command a market share that will prove to be most profitable under your operating constraints in your given market?