It wasn't speculation, mind you, just good old-fashioned local market knowledge and education on the strong underlying fundamentals (jobs, population growth, desirability, affordability). 2. 

Start with one property and focus on mastering the fundamentals before scaling up your portfolio.

Colby,I am in the Kansas City area so you have more knowledge of the Springfield area in general than I do but I know that the fundamentals there continue to make it a strong investment market.  

Lots of wholesalers out there don't know how to do those 2 fundamental things.Lastly formulating an offer under fair market value with enough equity to sell the contract to an investor. 

Back to my fundamental point: business first.

However, for the seller to net the agreed price, the price has to go up in which case you can run into the issue of the property not appraising.I think the fundamental issue is this requires a more sophisticated buyer and seller (especially to have a graduated commission scheme which is common in commercial). 

Los Angeles may provide more stability and long-term growth potential owing to its stronger market fundamentals, even though Philadelphia can have better cash flow possibilities.

At the end of the day, you have more to learn, but the high level  fundamentals are the same.  

Originally posted by @Bill Gulley:Tell you what, I'll write a check for $25,000.00 to anyone who can show me a guru course that actually teaches the fundamentals, requirements and basic concepts of real estate that was published prior to  this post!  

Discount rates and capitalization rates (cap rates) are two fundamental concepts in commercial real estate (CRE) analysis.