According to a Forbes article, " a survey conducted by Wakefield Research, found that one-third of Americans are more afraid to start their own business than to jump out of a plane!" 

The MEDIAN rents (50% higher, 50% lower) for the entire country are surveyed, collected and posted by HUD on their website www.HUDuser.org by either county or zip code in all 50 states. 

I recently participated in a Duke student survey detailing landlord experiences with S8 in my city, and I railed on all the problems, inefficiencies and contradictions in their stated goals versus methods.

I conducted a survey in 2005 when I launched my investor services business, and 13 out of 15 property managers described the same properties.

I made a lot of money on those but a monkey could have done the same with that market.Currently I work out of the house and contract out rental survey's and market studies for various property management firms, investors, and lenders.If you have any questions please feel free to pick my brain.

It will help to have a name to go to when you find a property.Get all your documents in pdf in a folder so you can send them quickly to the lender, (DL SS card if needed, tax returns, bank statements usually you can get current ones from your banks website)Pay off as much debt to increase your Debt to Income Ratio.One thing I understand in Texas is they need a survey to refinance or bank finance.

I work at an Architectural/Engineering/Surveying (AES) firm and regularly work on these types of projects.

Prepaid taxes and insurance, any lending fees, points, surveys, settlement fees etc

HUD comes up with these figures by doing rent surveys with landlords, and I have participated in many of those surveys over the years at the request of the local administrator of the Section 8 program. 

Jason these problem can be visualized like these:a) Cheap Money regimeb) Expensive money regime (post 22) Then we do have always options for investment :a) liquid cash investmentsb) stock / bond portfolioc) Equity residential investmentd)Debt investment There's recent survey from Citigroup that showing a family office has different strategy when financial condition is moving from cheap money to expensive money regime, for example, during 2010-2022 cheap money regime, it's not difficult to be agressive in equity investment (such as buying rental) as spread is huge (6-8%) ; but during expensive money era, like someone also mentioned above, the spread is only 2-3% now.I can always generate 8-9% "almost safely" with public interval fund or BDC while equity is also offerig something like 8-9% IRR, so between debt investment and equity investment , is not big of spread.