Even my basic understanding of the numbers allows me to hear them scream, "nooooo!"

Needless to say the "screaming cat" was gone and never came back...Anyway, you are describing 3 different issues:You can hear themYou can feel your bed moveYou are worried they can hear youThere is not too much you can do about hearing them walk around, unless you want to spend a ton of money. 

My descriptions are very loose, and I am sure other Dallas natives are screaming at their keyboards with my definitions.  

If you are expecting top dollar rents for the area your agent is going to have to work a LOT harder to get a tenant than if the rent is a screaming good deal for the area. c) Curb appeal -- do these houses look top-of-the-line when you pull up to them?

The constant high fives and the jumping up and down and screaming wasn't for me. 

I had 6 units at my maximum.This past May, I decided to capatalize on the appreciation of some screaming deals bought in 2011.

case in point.. a few years back city of Corvallis required us to do full engineering plans to go along with our prelim plat approval... everywhere else in ORegon you get pre lim plat approval relatively easy then you get a laundry lists of conditions.. sometimes the conditions are such that its not financially feasible to build the subdivision.Well we spent 100k getting all the final engineering done.. went into planning the neighbors were screaming like stuck pigs  ( 40 acres full of mature doug fir timber so it was like their private park.we negotiated to 27 lots  that would have worked... but neighbors wanted 23 .. one in particular did not want a house close to theirs and did not want the trees cut...

In my market, it is mostly unheard of to find screaming hot MLS deals...

If Trump tries to do nice things for RE investors the other side will scream foul and suggest self benefit agendas. 

Based on my research I could bump the rent to $1,100.The conservative numbers are as follows:Asking price: $120kOffer: $106kClosing costs: $3000Down Payment: 20% = $21,200Loan Amount: $84,800Rate: 5.125%:PITI: $541.72Gross monthly rent: $1,050Management Fee: $105 (10% + first month of rental)Maintenance: $100 (10%)Utilities: $0 (still validating that tenant pays all of them)Reserves/CapEx (5%): $52.50Vacancy rate (3%): $31.50Total Gross Annual Income: $12,600Annual Operating Expenses (no mortgage): $5,373Annual NOI: $7,227Operating Expense Ratio: 42%Monthly Cashflow: $131.78Annual Cash-on-cash: 6.53%GRM: 8.41DCR: 1.30BER: 86.62%I am still getting quotes from lenders though so if I do the following:Rate: 4.125% (buy the interest rate 1 point down or go with different lender)Closing costs: $4,000Rent: $1,100 / monthThen the numbers look more like:Monthly cashflow: $219Annual cash-on-cash: 10.45%This doesn't seem like a screaming deal to me.