Her analysis is more conservative than mine, but relatively similar.Just wondering if sharing this information is standard, or optional.

You buy it to park your cash in a safe place that has high appreciation and high demand for rent.That being said, send me a PM and I can get you a $500k apartment that will cashflow around $1300/month after CC/Tax and before debt service and a relatively strong growth rate over time.

The assessor's website probably says that the land is worth 40k and the building is worth 120k for a total of 160k.You know that 40k represents the land and 120k represents the building.40k/160k = 25% of your cost is related to land120k/160k = 75% of your cost is related to landThat is how you can apply the assessor's ratio to determine how much you should depreciate.A different method is to get comps of improved/unimproved lots to determine what the land price is apart from the building.

I am a relatively new member to the BP forum as well and am also age 23, located in Ohio.

Our landlord had watched him grow up (no relation, just lived nextdoor) and decided to take a chance on renting to two young kids.

Notice I haven't even mentioned the stock market or bond market or anything else related to Wall street.

Getting my realtor's license is teaching me a lot of un-sexy details related to real estate transactions.

Maybe I increase rents and they move out relatively quick, so in reality it would be like deferred maintenance, or maybe they stay another 5 years and don't complain about the carpet.Thanks.

I don't know about you but I don't usually follow the crowd when it comes to investing my money...I think only a few savvy investors will move from paper assets to more tangible assets like real estate - and no, I'm not talking about REITS and other real estate related stocks.

While I cannot offer much in return on this topic, I can offer a lot of help in just about anything related to IT :-)