By comparison - If a landlord has a bad year does he only have to pay 80% of his prop taxes?

Austin’s status as a technology hub along with its high concentration of venture capital, warm climate and vibrant cultural offerings lead to frequent comparisons with the Bay Area – and in fact, high-profile Silicon Valley companies, including Amazon, Google, Oracle and Tesla, have recently expanded their operations in Austin," the report reads in part.Articles below detail the economic growth of major metroplexes in the US and Austin comes in at number 2 on the list.  

@Joseph CrunkiltonExcel is great to track income and expenses on a annual basis.However, if you want to run reports or if you want to do a comparison, I feel like you want to run it through an accounting software such as quickbooks, stessa, etc.

Many don't realize that determining value for commercial properties is in theory much the same as determining value for single family houses... you use comparisons to recently closed sales of similar properties (with commercial properties you compare the cap rates, as you pointed out).As you also pointed out, as straightforward as Cap Rate is there's a lot of confusion, misconception, misunderstanding surrounding Cap Rate.

found a really cool piece of property with a small pond on it and know it would be great to develop it into a small subdivision. have a comparison to a Ryan's home property being developed and per arce the cost is the same.

By comparison, this sounds like a more advantageous situation than buying out of state. 

Do you think Miami is a good location for a second home investment, and represents a good return in comparison to the riskiness of this deal?

The 30% rate he's mentioning is an annual rate, I'm sure, so the comparison is valid.Are you borrowing 100% at the rates you mention?

Take a look where you live, see rent vs own comparison, account for all the things after tax and see if it makes sense to get your own pad.As Elizabeth said, you can get an FHA with 3% down or so (see the limits for your county).

In order of importance I do, Style of home, square footage, bed/bath count, basement comparison, then I move on to things like lot size, on or off street parking, garage, etc.