To get true comparisons you'll have to pro forma against leverage to see where you're ROI could be in a leveraged situation.

@Priyanka K.When investigating new markets I look for things like population growth (upward over the last 10 years)Job growth 1% or greaterUnemployment =< national averageper cap income 20KHousehold income 3 times annual rentnumber of households (in comparison to other markets) Favorable government policies (is the local government looking to attract business) those numbers will give me a sense of the macro market.

It's not an apples-to-apples comparison.

A few years ago I came upon a blog post or article somewhere that showed how much money it would take to buy rentals to meet the income of a traditional 4% rule retirement account. I wanted to show this to my wife whi...

My comparison is not based on anything personal - just the criteria you're working on:95% OOS investorsEast Cleveland is OKYou have a PM working thereIf I tell people it is not just danger zone, some places are war zones.

It is truly an apples to apples comparison.

The whole "DTI" thing is a measure of your income in comparison to your debt (that they see on credit). 

Certainly RDU is a special place and one of the few in the country like that - so not a completely fair comparison - however I feel that I've seen enough of these proximity effects to opine that the proximity of Ames and the quality of its graduates will be a big causal factor to continued DSM area growth - both population and economic. 

For comparison, another house of similar size they did was $14k.

However, the appraisal just came back, and they used the sale comparison approach.