An investment must stand on its own merit so to compare apples to apples, remove all financing in your calculations and compare each deal as if you were paying 100% cash.Now, to your next question, how do you compete with all cash?

Hi Daniel,You need an expert to run the comps until you learn your area very well.Zillow and Trulia can diverge by a lot from the real prices, as they don't compare apple to apple and orange to orange, meaning that they will compare single family homes with condo units and multifamily buildings sold in the same time, within a block.

There weren't just a few bad apples, most of the apples were bad and predatory.I realize this may go against the popular beliefs of those looking for other to blame, demonize someone for their constrained freedoms to do just anything they can dream up, but every game has rules, one reason we played games as kids was to understand that we had rules besides having fun.

That should lead you to question the apples-2-apples comparison of Cap rates.

@John MoreyI think those 3 are a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison.Nearly every credit report uses data from all or some of the Big 3 credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian & TransUnion).Of the 3 you mentioned only one of them (as far as I know) is directly affiliated with a major credit bureau TransUnion (SmartMove).Of the 3 major credit bureaus I personally think that TransUnion has the best information, service and people in the industry.For these reasons our company decided to partner with them.  

The next day, I started an eBay store, sold some extra things I had, learned how to fix iPhones and fixed some for people at my school and within month I could buy my MacBook.

That is apples and oranges.When evaluating whether it makes sense to put retirement savings into real estate, you need to compare how the retirement savings will perform as compared to if it was invested in conventional financial products.Many smart investors diversify their tax-sheltered IRA or 401k into solid, income producing assets such as real estate or private mortgages and end up with much better results for their future.

How bout these apples? 

We find people do this even when they subscribe to another product to get a list.Finally, you've mixed some apples and oranges.

Sure, there are plenty of bad Tenants out there but wise Landlords learn how to screen out the bad apples.