Advertisers here do as well, lots of new compact car or eco types here, BMW and a couple Benz ads seems to be the top end I've seen.

What is the proportion of renters to owners?

What's up @Mike Turano, I know there is a great, compact list of meetups at Straight Up Chicago Investor podcast website.

The market ranges from A to C- areas and is comprised of mostly single-family to four-plex properties.Price points are much lower than on the east or west coasts, however, rents are proportionally much higher, leading to positive cash-flow.

This actually takes into account every single actual expense for any one specific "deal" and applies all expenses incurred by the company equally or proportionally to each current deal.Most people will miss many expenses when looking at just one deal, but when all the companies expenses are spread out between all the deals that are ongoing you will get a truer picture of the entire cash flow picture.

The argument is that your IRA is over benefiting from an investment that it did not proportionally make.

However things like vacancy and real estate commissions will be proportional to rent.I was going to say that the 50% expenses is probably too conservative, but my main point was  rent > mortgage/taxes/insurance does not lead to positive cash flow.

If you're in New Jersey or Texas, property appreciation outpacing rent hikes could actually be very bad, since now your property tax bill blew up on you (but rent didn't go up proportionally).

After accounting for closing costs, you end up with a very slim margin.I have noticed that a fairly large proportion of the investors here have their own real estate license so they save on selling costs.

If the deal can't pay your expenses and you think it's the best you can do, then you and your agent should share in the disappointment (in the proportions you agreed upon).The only difference between your financial obligations like property taxes and your contractual obligation to your realtor, is that you are in a position of power relative to the agent and not the county that collects your taxes.