in my experience doing this in Vegas - the gross rental income is about 50% higher. 

.🔹 Great for Sellers & Investors – Motivated sellers can turn a vacant or hard-to-sell property into income while investors secure future deals without a huge upfront commitment.🔹 Ideal in Any Market – Whether home prices are rising or falling, lease options allow you to lock in today’s price while benefiting from future appreciation.Other creative strategies—like seller financing, subject-to deals, and the BRRRR method—can also open doors, but lease options remain one of the most powerful, low-risk, minimal cash out-of-pocket ways to build a portfolio.

Next goal is $250k in income through my real estate and stepping away from the day to day management of the properties.

@Tony Schmucker Now that you know all of those markets work from a Macro perspective you should look to see where you want to live for 2-3 years and what your and your wife's income will be in those markets.

Year long lease typically, with subletting allowed to offset summer months cost to tenant.I worked out some high-level math: Assuming there is a 6 bedroom single family house for sale for 800k, and I can rent for 6k/month.Financing: 350k cash, 450k loan @30yr, 3.8%.Assumptions: 7% vacancy/yr, $4000/yr repairs, $10k/yr property tax, $4k/yr insurance, 8% management fee+50% first month rent on new leaseMonth-to-month breakdown: Income: $6000 Vacancy, Mgmt fee, repair, taxes, insurance: $2300Loan PI: $2650I'd take home ~$1000/month. 

Either way, after five years, I can say I achieved a certain level of passive income—just not the kind that puts cash in my pocket. 

I live in a lower-income area, so I figure that the better tenants you will get with a safe house, the ongoing safety the tenants feel, and the lowered risk of a break-in (when occupied or vacant getting ready to lease), and reduced headaches/vacancy/potential damage are worth the marginal up-front cost of having it installed.

Rental income carries the debt service 100% How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

@Karim, I’ve been adding some properties/rental income on my Excel to see which locations would give a descent return.JLT gives good ROI, Marina does not.

They've gone as far as writing algorithms that pull data points like crime rates, age, median income, number of coffee shops and hundreds of others to create heat maps of where to buy.