Alternatively, the investor could save themselves the hassle (and heartburn) and invest in the S&P 500 index.

I guess they have to crunch the numbers and that takes time.https://us.spindices.com/index-family/real-estate/...Zillow has a feature that allows you to search and city and crunch your own data.

When I attended real estate investor meetings in California 15 years ago, one of the invited speakers said he used the affordability index to predict the top of the market.

Vanguard index funds - super low fees.

I'm personally sitting on cash but have a lot invested into real estate as well, and some in index funds.

@Surendra Chawla and others, for the Phoenix metro area, I found a very useful resource called the Cromford Index.This is put together by ASU's Head of the Real Estate Dept (Prof Michael Orr).http://getyourphx.com/refresher-the-cromford-report/http://cromfordreport.com/index.htmlThis seems to be a very unique and highly useful index specific and limited only to Phoenix area.https://www.youtube.com/watch?

This is why I set my CoC Return at 10%, because I want to know I'm at or above the returns I could get by just throwing my money in an index fund and not having to worry about it.

http://get.biggerpockets.com/forms/index/

But with rising CLI (cost of living index), property taxes and insurance, I have fallen behind the FMR (Fair Market Rent). 

Most of our loan after the fixed period head to a libor margin/index (that's changing next couple years).