Ah, the old "have my cake and eat it too" question.

Here's the icing on the cake: his central air failed earlier this summer and he now has at least five window units on the house, propped up with two-by-two sticks!

We're selling out like hot cakes at 3x the property value!!!

But, with the tax spreadsheet - entering the data into TurborTax manually is a piece of cake.

Either way, the chances of people being mad now or later are high...Passive losses are the icing on the cake, nothing more and nothing less.

You know, travel insurance, art work, local restaurants, special cake delivery, laundry service (for their kids at college), car service, special events, etc...etc.I know someone who is hiring a full time person to manage just this aspect (so, it will cover their salary plus make money). 

You can't have your cake and eat it too. 

Then when the market crashed many equity investors as we know got hammered ( I was one of them) So then the Marketing companies repositioned the message and came up with a few new tag  lines:" appreciation is only icing on the cake its all about cash flow don't care if the asset ever goes up in value"" Live were you want but invest were it makes sense"and so on.. so you have the last 10 years of investors primed for cash flow and primed to buy were the numbers are highest vis a vi a passive rental return..

Samantha,Not sure if you're still looking for input from investors, but since I just discovered your thread researching MACK I figured I'd chime in.Unfortunately I don't have any experience with the software itself, but I can give you some thoughts on what I look at when studying a proforma.An ideal proforma for me includes:Multiple external and internal photos of the propertyRehab status# of beds, baths, garageMarket rents (or, if rents are estimated using something like the 1% rule, noting how they were derivedDefault allowances for vacancies and maintenance reserves > 0% (this was one thing that immediately turned me off in the "available properties" email I got from MACK last week)Monthly mortgage payment estimates assuming a 20% or 25% down paymentInsurance estimatesProperty tax estimatesCash flow ($), Cap rate, cash-on-cash return, return on equity, and ROI (with both cash-only and leveraged #s displayed where relevantMonthly & annual views of income & expense estimates10/20/30-year financial scenarios for all of the key measures of returnNeighborhood info is icing on the cake -- schools, crime rate, public transit, and compsI realize that's a lot to absorb.

Appreciation is a nice icing on the cake but the cash flow is the real yield that keeps on giving no matter what the market does to the value of the home.