@Mike DymskiUnfortunately investors are going crazy bidding up investment properties in my market and artificially driving up rents.Even with market rate rent and purchase price, the returns are not great in my market.

Interest received is interest income.Then there are collateral and foreclosure matters you need to look at.That's another, jack up the price issue, if the property comes back to you, as a deed-in-lieu-of-foreclosure, you'll be paying taxes on an artificial price, blue sky, and any sale later may not cover that, so it's a loss.

The Fed manipulating rates and artificially keeping rates low has probably had a lot to do with propping up the real estate market.  

We've had too long a period with artificially low rates and people now believe that's what rates just should be.

We always drive vehicles we purchase at auctions for a few hundred or few thousand dollars with the exception that I purchased my wife a Mercedes SUV for about $80,000 about 7 years ago, but she never drives the vehicle and I think it has only about 1500 miles on the odometer.My two children are leaving tomorrow to go to college in Fairbanks Alaska and Columbus Ohio tomorrow to get PHD's in math and pharmaceutical medicine (or something like that).

- Median income (I use this as an indicator for the rental market -> Is it artificially inflated?)

Shut down the world economy that caused supply shocks at the same time you have government stimulus which artificially raised demand.

My background is in artificial intelligence research, and building high-throughput underwriting systems, and most recently I served as a founding engineer at a financial technology startup.I'm super excited to finally get into the RE space and would love to meet experienced folks in the field and learn the ropes.

Or doctors that practice medicine without a license.    

I'm never impressed when I hear of artificial price inflation (market manipulation).