@Mike Freske for commercial loans way to do a quick and dirty ballpark comparison is ask the lenders/banks what index they use and what their "typical" spread is.

At the end of the day, this is about numbers, but it is also a people business.)In regards to Market Supply Index, yes, what Michael said above. 

I invested that in stocks & index funds. 

You can keep track of our progress and access the landlord forms here: http://get.biggerpockets.com/forms/index/For those of you that purchased, we would be grateful if you could take a moment to leave a review on this thread.

Match the consumer price index, which is usually 2% - 3%.

San Jose City Council will meet next week to vote on additional rent control measures, including changing the current 5% rent cap to an inflation based index.

Dept of Defense does rent studies throughout the USA and indexes military members' housing allowance based on where they live.

Wilmington does have upside but it's also a violent city (check violent crime indexes) so if you invest there make sure you know the neighborhoods and what you are getting into. 

Before I got into real estate investing, I would put my a big chunk of my saved money into into an S&P 500 index fund and work 401K. 

You can basically see when they came in by looking at the case Schiller index for atl.