Needless to say that anyone that had purchased in the last 5 years has done well as long as they were in areas that moved up with appreciating rents and values.Unfortunately, not all of America had done that.I still have a friend of mine that bought in Bristol, CT that have not seen much value or rent appreciation although it had maintained it's consistency.The problem is that he totally missed the boat on the appreciating areas which was where he lived.Unfortunately, investing in non-appreciating areas but living and not owning in the appreciating area is a formula that spelled disaster for him.

Plus, it lets all these newer concepts & formula marinate in my head as I figure out some key items ... mainly thinking through on what kind of real estate investor I want to be, what kind of portfolio I wish to build, and can I analyse deals properly. 

I know a good baseline in determining your MAO is by using the formula MAO = (ARV x Investor Discount) - Repairs -Closing Cost - Assignment Fee.

Ideally whatever formula I work out will be scalable and I can do some more deals with other friends. 

BPers, I'm trying to calculate my net cash flow and it occurred to me that in the normal formulas we tend to use, we never factor in the tax write offs.

If you're simply looking to maximize your wealth-building let me give you a simple formula.

But what is the basic formula to figure it out?

As Ned said above, I wouldn't use that formula for a buy and hold.

I've never been to one of Dave's events, but many of the guru events are a similar song and dance. 

The pros that come on the podcasts have a simple formula that works and they execute it efficiently.