As in any investment due diligence is a necessity.Lastly, my observation after 40 years as an investor, broker, fund manager and syndicator of both real estate and of mortgage notes: Notes are the more difficult investment to get right.  

I also wondered what happened to average prices when rates rose precipitously, so I looked at cases where month-over-month rate increases were greater than 5% (this happened in only 22 of the 365 months observed).

Something I've observed in listening to the podcast and reading all the articles is how investors are getting conventional loans for their investments.

You can observe how many properties are offered and how long they stays on the market.

Try and go to your local auction and observe and talk with other people that are buying tax liens.

I don't have any hard data to back this up, this is just from casual observation of having lived in Cedar Park for 9 years and Leander now for almost 2.Are you attending any local REI meetings or MeetUp's?  

As a starting point, I did the simplest thing possible: I simply took the July’23 Zillow Observed Rent Index value for rent, and divided it July’23 Zillow Home Value Index for home value.

Just a quick observation here, but @Brandon Hall is a frequent contributor on BP and is a knowledgeable person from what I have observed.

That just seems crazy to me (as a general observation).

He also observed some active water penetration into the basementI am trying to figure out if it’s worth it to look into fixing it and trying to make the deal work, or if I should just keep looking for a different property.