If you are building your rental empire than using the excess cash flow to build up an additional down payment fund is also an excellent use of your cash flow.Robert Kiyosaki preaches that you should  reinvest the excess cash flow into your real estate business and not use it to increase your lifestyle.

@Tom Camarda in the case of the DST, the sponsor was Inland.

My area of expertise is more in land investment, but if there is anything I can help you with while you're here, feel free to ask!

Some prices are dropping in the Inland Empire, but that is not consistent throughout.

Not empires, just performing holdings, just regular old buy and hold mom and pops.  

With our expense ratio and current lending situation (25 year/4.75%) we are looking for gross income to be 25% of our all in land/build/furnishings cost.  

A real estate empire is built one house at a time. 

Surely there's enough empirical data out there to be able to narrow it down to one solid area that beats out the rest?

Also, if you have prior experience in land investment, now would be a good time to briefly mention it, to build credibility.With land, oftentimes people will have longer close periods; do you actually plan to close within 30 days on the property?

I'd also urge you to chat with Bill McAfee, owner of Empire Title in Colorado Springs about his thoughts on mitigation.