I work with a bunch of investors who try to reduce it to the numbers and while this works for the most part to hone in from a 30K foot view, once you get under the clouds it tends to be a little bit of black magic involved regardless of the market.  

Bye the way folks, Jeff is my CPA and he makes the magic happen. 

First off brand new full-time agents don't magically gain more knowledge or experience than a part timer.

Your business and personal profiles are used to apply, so what magic dust do they sprinkle on your application that gets you $20k rather that $5k start limits ????

The initial returns are lower on paper in better locations (lower cap rate, less initial cashflow according to the magic spreadsheet), but the overall returns in reality are much better including all the different ways people make money in real estate (gained equity through natural and forced appreciation, principle pay-down, increasing rents= higher cash flow when looking at the big picture if you buy and hold, depreciation tax benefits, plus way less of the big profit killers like turnover, non-paying tenants, property damage and theft, dealing with bad contractors because good ones don’t choose to work in bad areas either, etc.). 

Generally at least 15-20% down is the magic number I'm looking for. 

Someone want to tell me where these magic B+ neighborhoods of 20-30% cash on cash return are in this current interest rate situation (or the last 20 months).

It's a ridiculously good asset class when you  know what you are doing, but living off of cash flow is really, really hard unless you have some paid off properties or a lot of time for rent appreciation to do its magic.

Not as good as we were buying, but good enough to execute most of the sales before the world started unraveling.The best decision we made during our disposition process was seeking out seasoned agents who were specialists in their market niches and letting them work their magic in their market specialties.

Yes way to many people think this is the magic pill that will make taxes go away.