(we created a construction rescue program as a result of this) We  provide excellent incentives for our investors,including locking in long term debt at 3.75 % through our in-house financing program. 2 years free property management as well.

This is an excellent answer, thank you!

I've put together this excel document after reading Brandon Turners "The Book on Rental Property Investing".

Hey @Matthew Samson, regarding "figuring out the financials" for 0-5 small properties, you can do this easily yourself just using excel or another free method.

Select a larger area that is at least 30 minutes in each direction. with maybe a hand full of exceptions I am pretty sure you would be hard pressed to find a mix that represents the demographic cross section of this country and therefor a wide range of neighborhoods.

Facebook groups are an excellent resource for this. 

I watched Dave Meyer's Market Intelligence Workshop on Demystifying Deal Analysis and found it very informative but I cannot find the TRI deep dive Excel spreadsheet.

For projections, you can use excel spreadsheet as it will be cheaper and easy to manage. 

Hone your Excel skills by creating pro-formas to practice your 1% rule underwriting while never touring a single property 4.

Unless I think I can time the market, I am going to keep deploying my cash in something better than that.I am also bearish on treasuries, which I think will generally see yields rise (and values decline) on anything with longer maturities (yield curve normalization and long term downward pressure on the ratings/"safety" of US gov't debt).All excellent points- I agree with you on assumable mortgages, but I think the challenge is that most of those are owner occupy and the banks typically won't allow them to be assumed by investors.