and buy in the best places for me to invest in.I'm going for a buy and hold strategy and would like something that's affordable ($200-300k) and has a high cap rate and has a strong rental market with lots of quality tenants.So far I'm looking at the parts of Santa Ana that border Costa Mesa, Downtown LB, and recently parts of Oceanside.

Being legal and getting the deal closed is not the same thing.Consider making offers in the name of an LLC where you can sell the LLC rather than assign the contract.Or do deals at a level where you can afford to use hard money or a double close if you get too many acceptances all at once.John Corey

[/quoteThe question is how many rentals can you afford to buy if you put down a traditional 20%?

•He is now back in work and feels that if he hadn’t fallen so far behind he wouldn’t have a problem in affording the mortgage.

Some use a rule of thumb saying that if rates drop by 1% you can afford to refi.Better is to do the math.

At some point, houses will become so unaffordable that most people simply can not afford them.

Anyway now that we're considering relocating to OR we seem to have widely divergent ideas on how much we can afford to spend on our next house.

There can be restrictions on the deed to make the housing affordable.

As the higher rates have taken effect, some borrowers have found themselves unable to afford the new monthly payments.

Once you identify in advance what market you are in, this will allow you to eliminate some of the other scenerios afforded to the real estate investor and plan accordingly.