I agree with the previous posts, the tariffs brought an almost immediate increase in appliance prices, but from what I've seen it mainly affected the higher end products.

Hey BiggerPockets,I'm interested in starting my real estate investing with small apartment buildings (around 5-12 units) in the Pittsburgh area but am having a tough time finding real estate agents who excel with these property types.Any suggestions on generating leads and finding agents who specialize in this apartment building size?

@Joshua Paul the answer to your question is that yes, this is an excellent idea!

For flips, I excel in valuing the as-is and as-repaired values and produce forward looking valuations based on market trends.

At this point everything you are saying is counter productive to doing business.

I heard MIT has an excellent Commercial RE program

There are products out in the market now that allow you to cash out up to 75% of current value after 90 days of ownership, no personal income or tax returns needed. 

I felt that my quantitative background can give me a great advantage because I probably spend more time on excel analysing and building models than most agents out there.

Something I did was build my own excel sheet from looking at several different investors who also give out advice.

I am becoming very frustrated with my investor as I continually send good flips her way with excel spreadsheets to back up repair estimates (we own a remodeling company so we are pretty good at figuring it out) as well as CMA's that back up my ARV because I am a licensed agent with access to the MLS.