What blew my mind through this process is how people calculate returns.

Then, I am using Rent Property Calculator and mortgage payment to estimate if the property can yield a positive cash flow.

It is important to factor in all the benefits of house hacking into your calculations, i.e. amortization, appreciation, income, & potential rent avoidance.

Many, if not most, want to have this data, but a very high % don't calculate monthly performance.

But what I found ironic are:- Andy, who has been working full time in RE for 4 years, are finally going to make $50K passive annual income from rental (with a flawed net profit calculation that didn't income vacancy rate, maintenance fee); and he said after attending the $39,500 program, he paid total $80K--poor Andy didn't even make his initial investment back after four years and yet they are demonstrating him as a success case.- In fact, Andy is now a "trainer"--which seems to me, training is their stream of income, not real estate- Andy revealed that he found his deal leads through words of mouth; what's ironic is the instructor kept on selling the importance of the company's Elite Success Software and told us we can't make deal without itInstead of teaching something, they spent the whole third day (at least until 1 pm when I finally decided to leave) selling the program.

BiggerPockets also has a calculator to analyze deals, and I highly recommend you start this as soon as possible, even if you are not ready to buy.

A suggestion I would give you is to find a couple "for rent" signs in your local market, get the address and start "running your numbers" on the rental property calculator that BP has for us on here.

We are ok with making calculated risks with our money, but when you introduce other peoples' money to the equation as a variable it can get sticky.

But you would have to calculate the individual debt services to see if the debt is cheaper or more expensive.

On Page 134, he lists the following when analyzing a deal:Sales Price: $132,490.00Sales Expenses: $17,000.00Loan Balance: $55,004.72Total Invested Capital: $35,950.00Profit: $24,535.28I agree with his thought process here when he calculates net profit, but I'm trying to verify the net profit by adding up all the sources of income over the past five years in his example by doing the following:Appreciation over five years=$12,490 (see chart on Page 133).Cash flow ($297.73x12x5)=$17,863.80 over five years.Loan paydown: ($60,000-55,004.72)=$4,995.28 over five years.Sales Expenses are still $17,000.Doing the math, profit= $12,490+$17,863.80+$4,995.28-$17,000=$18,349.08There is a $6,186.20 difference from the net profit he calculates.My question is: Is this $6,186.20 difference due to the forced appreciation gained in the property from the rehab he does in this example?