The article made me stop and examine if I was really working on my business or in my business.

It is important to be able to analyze the trailing 12 month financial statement of a property and take a deeper look at the loss to lease by examining the rent roll.Ideally, you are lucky enough to have an excel version of the rent roll provided to you by the broker or the owner you are interacting with on your potential acquisition (or.. if you or someone you know is developing a character recognition software that is able to read a PDF version of a rent roll and convert it to a nice, clean excel version please let me know!).

Beware there are quite a few older (1960s - 1980s), small multis (8 - 20 units) on the market recently which look like values until you really examine the operating costs in light of the current (and potential) tenant populations. 

However, I also look at expenses per unit (as a secondary examination), to see if there is anything out of order (e.g. market insurance is $200-$300 per door, and even if the overall expenses are 50% of Gross Income, but insurance is $420, than I look into it.

But seriously, i would make sure that before spending a dime, that I would really examine WHAT it is that I Need. 

@Michael ArreolaEnrolled Agent requires completing 3 examinations related to taxation.

Start with value clarification and self examination.

I read that you are allowed to record the examination as long as you provide a 10 notice in writing.

My mom was a title examiner years ago so I am secondhand familiar with the process.

In my experience, once you start examining operating statements you find that the expenses are conveniently low.