Before you get roasted investing out of area using the 1% rule, please allow me to share my 2 cents to give you an apples to apples comparison:Say $700/mo/unit for a 4plex asking $280k.

The overall mindset to keep, in my opinion, is to make as much as an apples to apples comparasion. 

For example Apple you would search their symbol, AAPL.

It was a magnet for young, white-collar professionals, renting their first high $ place.What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

I usually throw cards away when I can’t take notes and almost always forget why I saved them.You can get blank cards 10 to a sheet at Staples that come with simple instructions to call up the standard business card templates in MS Word or Apple Pages.

Thank you all, I'm a nicer guy than I may be perceived to be based on postings in forums, but make no doubt about it, if appropriate action is required toward bad apples, I can be their juicer.

An investment must stand on its own merit so to compare apples to apples, remove all financing in your calculations and compare each deal as if you were paying 100% cash.Now, to your next question, how do you compete with all cash?

Hi Daniel,You need an expert to run the comps until you learn your area very well.Zillow and Trulia can diverge by a lot from the real prices, as they don't compare apple to apple and orange to orange, meaning that they will compare single family homes with condo units and multifamily buildings sold in the same time, within a block.

There weren't just a few bad apples, most of the apples were bad and predatory.I realize this may go against the popular beliefs of those looking for other to blame, demonize someone for their constrained freedoms to do just anything they can dream up, but every game has rules, one reason we played games as kids was to understand that we had rules besides having fun.

That should lead you to question the apples-2-apples comparison of Cap rates.