I would guess their price would go down as they grow and get more providers on payroll.

Where is PM, utilities, payroll, leasing commissions, landscaping and upkeep, repairs, capEX, vacancies, and marketing?

Commercial owners tend to be more sophisticated. 

I have managed payroll, payables, receivables and financial statement activities.

I will retire and will get a % in retirement income- my base plans center on this concept...I know I will need to earn at least an equivalent income to maintain my lifestyle so my current pay minus the retirement pay becomes the target 'free and clear' number I am targeting to earn from rentals.2years: purchase rentals such as to meet the requirements above in the Everett area so that I can do it locally and learn the ins/outs of property management...5years: develop (aggressively) rentals in Tucson Arizona to an arbitrary level of 10K/month (this would be in addition to my living income from retirement checks and Everett rentals.7years: (side goal- personal dreams and all...) finance a golf tour across the country10years: Certified/Sophisticated investor status and begin investment journey in other asset classes (if not there already...)These are just loose concepts in my mind, with the exception of course that when I finally do 'retire' from the Navy, I really do have a goal of having replaced my current levels of income so that I don't have to work for others unless it is something that I really want to do.I see my primary focus as being in the buy/hold/rent arena, but I am not discounting other methods including wholesale and fix/flip projects for capital injections periodically.Finally, I see a lot of value in the Rich Dad encouragement for folks to get into business.

My experience with hundreds of apartment investors is that they are typically sophisticated...

This is where I see most of the errors happening.If you use for instance an attorney that only does commercial real estate they will run into these issues and many more on a daily basis Their level of knowledge will tend to be highly sophisticated in this one area of contracts.I have no clue what could have been changed.

Unless they inherited their money and spent their entire lives partying, they are usually quite sophisticated about investments.

Since we've had w2 jobs most of our taxes have been paid in payroll already the last few years, so we're just keeping a close eye on it and might reassess and do the quarterly payments in the future if we need to. 

The leading index is prepared for each state by the Philly Federal Reserve and uses payrolls, employee hours, earnings, housing starts, yield curve, etc to predict changes in economic growth.