That return would equate to around 420,000 within 30 years (hopefully). 

Unless I’m missing part of the equation here. not to mention if you live in something you don’t own, it really as if you are paying 100% interest to the property owner.

If you get it positive, and you still want to sell it, your math equation becomes how many months do I need to own this to cover on the amount of fees/etc. that I paid to get the house.

I've met some who's actions have implied that running their units into the ground and/or treating their tenants like trash equates to cash flow. 

A part of that equation is being able to have access to all available clients, if having a full sleeve reduces that pool of clients, I would just not roll-up the shirt sleeves, to have that access.

for 2 doors and above it caps the rent at 5% + CPI which equates to about 8%. 

Even that won't set you apart like it once did, but at least then you'll be competing with a few hundred homes instead of a tens of thousands, and it will bring cash flow back into the equation as a realistic possibility.I own and manage several in the area and can give some specific figures on data from the recent few months if you want to compare that to what you're calculating out for your mortgage payment and expenses.

Assuming my number of units per property average is around 3, this would equate to 10 total properties (30 units) in 5-years and put me at the limits of conventional loans and portfolio lending. 

I assume this equation applies primarily to property that they dont plan on generating any income from while owning the property.My question is, if I you plan on generating some rental income during the time that you own the property would that change how much you would be willing to pay for the property?

I was more interested in seeing how the equations related to one another and giving myself some type of quick analysis to determine if a property was worth looking into further.