It seems like cap rate may be misapplied here.

Craig, if title must go to you before you grant title, your ability to purchase is accomplished to close the transaction first, even if it's micro-seconds, besides state laws, there are issues of escrowed funds being misapplied, if any closer is still doing these they are wrong.You need transactional funding, basically a loan for an hour or a few days. 

I'm not even sure that most of the behaviors that people here have been annoyed with are *bad* (that is, not malum in se, but perhaps malum prohibitum in certain cases)... but they definitely seem mis-applied. 

I know of a real estate guru one of the mid western states is after because a student misunderstood and misapplied his program.

@Daniel HennekI believe you have misapplied that Canon of the Code of Ethics.

I'll show three more leveraged examples to help drive the points home.Following is an example of positive leverage misapplied (ie the ROI is less than the cap rate).

So the rule is real... it just sounds like it's being misapplied in your case.Happy to answer other questions for you!

Since that was me, I heard the "analysis paralysis" advice starting out, but I thought it was misapplied to what I was doing.

But all slumlords are landlords so it is inevitable that the term will get misapplied.

If you can't figure out yourself how the numbers play out in each scenario you need to stay away from investing in that area.I once had a "Realtor" send me elaborate spreadsheets with "worst case scenario" numbers based on misapplied formulas in the wrong context.