Cash flow is small potatoes compared to equity over long periods of time.If you want cash flow, start a business. 

How does one compare to the other? 

With an FHA loan, you are not going to be bringing hardly any capital to closing (compared to a conventional 4-fam purchase with 25% down).   

We recommend you get management contracts from several PMCs and compare the services they cover and, more importantly, what they each DO NOT cover.

Send me a DM and I'll send you an intro and overview with some hard comparables.

(look, if you have 30+ units you are a GURU compared to me and the average Joe!)

Also the OOS investor is doing a lot better as PM services have moved up in quality a ton compared to when i was working those markets in the 2000s.. lets also keep in Mind Ohio and MIchigan got HAMMERED in the GFC the professional note buyers of defaulted notes for a few years post GFC would not even buy that paper it was so bad.

What probably doesn’t help also is that we will be using hard money which eats into profits and so getting that better deal seems to be harder compared to investors that have cash. 

I occasionally look at contingent comps if I can't find anything comparable and have exhausted all possible avenues for sold comps.

After speaking with a local realtor and lender for quite some time to just get some information, they advised me that we are currently in a "buyers market" compared to a "sellers market."