You can offset most if not all of your mortgage and sometimes the utilities also, and possibly live for FREE that way. 

You don't have to have all cash, your IRA can buy a property using leverage but you must utilize non-recourse financing (no personal guarantee is allowed according to the IRS rules).

This is a common question but there's no perfect answer.

You have mentioned a lot of fun facts, but nothing that I would use to analyze a market for REI.In all these areas, what are numbers ($$$$) for the following important questions:1 - What are the entry prices for the common square footages (ranges of similar comps)?

Why do you recommend checking local ADU (accessory dwelling unit) requirements, when my question was expressedly about NON-dwelling units (no utilities)?

I'm a mechanical engineer currently working full time in the utility industry.The more I read and learn, the more I'm realizing that my next move would be to invest passively to gain experience for future investments.

I would recommend looking through Craigslist and Zillow/Trulia/HotPad for small-multi rentals and see what is the common theme throughout the listings.

Just to add our local specifics: make sure how your landlords/owners want to handle turning utilities after tenants move out: in the winter it's critical.

Very common for people to group together to meet all the requirements.If you PM me I can send you a list of resources (books, podcasts, white papers ect) that have been useful to me in learning about the apartment business.Cheers

Here are some common ones you can tweak based on your market and personal standards:1.