Regarding your rents question, you're going to have to find a REALLY good deal around here in order to meet even the 1% rule, in my observation.

My wife and I have been observing and researching the possibility of doing our own real estate investments.

Start with what you can observe from the outside, before the tenant knows you're watching.

So, take time to understand your local real estate market from an investing perspective.Look at numerous properties before they sell, and observe them through the process of rehabbing, flipping, and leasing to tenants.

If this is the only property that you will ever buy to rent it out, you will have to observe it without tapping into the cash flow for the next two years.

I thought I'd narrowed it down to 2 possibles, but now I'm in full analysis paralysis...I've eliminated Equity Trust Company based on lots of negative feedback on BP and on my own personal observation of their unresponsiveness when I was buying a property owned within one of their SD IRAs.

I will be opening a property management business in the very near future, I'm getting ready to test for my brokers license this month, so I have set the price for my own portfolio of rentals at $50 door.  10% is more common for the area, I've seen 8% for owners with multiple properties and I've even seen as low as 6% but that definitely seems to be a case where you get what you pay for based on my observations...

Just some of my observations in the area lately: I live in on LI now and the market is very different here from other areas of the country.

Based on my general observation, the cash flow gets better as you get away from the coast.

And that reserve you're holding in your IRA has to be cash, ie, not invested in other potentially risky investments.Those are all general observations with do not apply to everyone.