In all but the 2007-2009 Great Recession, inflation-adjusted home prices only declined an average of 2.7 percent from the month before the recession began to the final month of the recession"https://www.redfin.com/blog/ne...

Our market is pretty inflated currently, and that has made it more difficult to find a decent deal.  

These current tenants that are requesting this from you; do you think they expect it for free, or are you intending on making up the cost by raising rents by more than inflation or market to make up for the cost?

If the house is in midland or Odessa it’s gonna be an inflated quote because of the caliber of job pay over there.

and it depends on your inflation rate.....17% inflation rate with 10% bank interest fixed, could be slam dunk.

If you don’t think the property class is correct, then the company may be inflating the property class so they charge more.

Some of the factors included are:Depreciation, Income Tax benefits by lowering your income bracket, inflation to provide equity in your rental property and rise of selling price when it is sold, capital gains/losses when you sell your rental property, etc.In addition, in order to use a real property as a rental, it is desirable to have it in the rental market for a long term.

Assume a 3% inflation. 10 year time span. 1 house is worth 130k. 5 houses worth $650k.

Ideally, buy one every year and you'll average into the market.Now if you're going to flip the property or something more short-term then your thought process should be much different.Strictly opinion here, I am not a financial adviser or fiduciary or anything of the sort, but when I look at the current set-up for inflation over the next say 10-20 years, I think there might not be a better time to be buying cash flow real estate on fixed-rate debt than right now.

Things like "yeah I see why you like the theoretical numbers on 123 Main St, but check out these income numbers for the area, median incomes aren't keeping up with inflation, which means that over time your rent might be forced down relative to inflation, and you told me your goal is buy and hold with 15+ year ownership horizons.