I have come up with some savings and looking for a steady stream of income, perhaps from a multifamily.Would love to get educated by all those who have been there and done that.One question I do have right off the bat tho, I seem to see all these multifamily homes on loopnet with decent Cap rates and a decent NOI but when i deduct what the debt service would be for financing such a property even with 30%-35% down, I seem to arrive at a net profit figure of something like 5-6k/yr.  

I wanted to find new income streams and real estate (specifically buy and holds) was always something I thought I'd be interested in.  

Whether they are effective or not, they wind up littering our streets and right of ways and often make their way into our streams as trash.They ultimately lower our property values by contributing to poor aesthetics in an area.

If you are trying to make this your full time gig, buy as much as possible, if just using it as another income stream, maybe two homes as suggested would be more up your alley.

On posts like this one, I find myself missing Bob Bowling.I think the issue is that you understand the ratio to which Cap Rate applies, but maybe not how it is traditionally applied.Cap rate is typically used to establish a present value for a stream of revenue within a set market: NOI of a MF property, in real estate.

I would be more concerned with if this property is actually a good deal first before pursuing money streams.

As a investor you must recognise a rental property has two separate income generating streams.

So you can see that the more equity you have in a property generating it's own income stream the less cash flow the actual property produces.

This forum is not about stocks, but I actually find it very useful to study balance sheets and income statements of publicly traded companies in other industries to get a sense for how they manage leverage and risk ... it is insightful to see utility companies leverage way up since their income streams are so steady while tech companies tend to have little to no leverage since their income streams can change at the drop of a hat (good or bad) with new innovations, and yet they can both still be very profitable.

Rooming Houses are a way to have a Hotel type income stream from a lot less square footage and maintenance headaches, with one guy as the Manager.