The rental rates are nowhere near strong enough to make sense when buying very inflated houses.

The lower of 4% or local CPI guarantees in the long term the existing tenant rents will not keep up with inflation.  

Our team helps a lot of out of state and out of town investors find properties that meet their needs (usually parking equity after a 1031 or moving equity from other real estate investments in other markets).Cashflow obviously depends on your LTV, but I would say the days of cash-flowing on an 80% LTV deal in this area are long gone, particularly with increased insurance rates and inflated operating expenses.

It just destroyed it 1v1 against inflation. 

Which we know it isn't, because if it was you'd be doing something else not sitting on $1.3m liquid cash just burning up to inflation in an account somewhere. 

Inflation, for instance, can raise property prices, but this doesn't necessarily translate into a real increase in value when adjusted for the cost of living.Demand can also drive appreciation, but there are factors that could cause demand to decrease.

Inflation declined by 0.1% for the first time since May 2020. 

It is also a little bit of speculation on my part that 1) home values will continue to appreciate at or above the inflation rate and 2) that eventually rates may drop 1 - 2% (I am at 7.5% on my most recent refinance) and will be able to do a cashout refi in 2 - 5 years.What are other's thoughts on this?

I'm in a very inflated market at the moment and this person claimed they could find me off-market properties and if I'd be interested in flipping homes instead of buying and holding.

Many Multi-family properties now in debt service trouble as the GPs took out very risky 2-3 yr floating rate or adjustable loans so they could cash flow after buying very expensive 3Cap apartments, which loans have gone from 1.5% to 5% or higher, and knowing that obvious and predictable risk since every primate could see mega-inflation coming in early 2021 due to more money printed in 2 yrs than first 200 yrs of country, They "smartly" took out Rate Cap insurance, (cost 50k for a 12 month policy on 10mil loan to cap variable insurance rise about 1-1.5% above the origination level) but now that US 10yr up 10x from 0.31 in 3/2020 to 4.2%, that same insurance policy is 1.5-2.0 million not 50K, so They can't cover the much higher debt service nor buy new cap insurance without shutting down distributions or capital calls.