Now, of course, you also get some principial paydown, but that may pale in comparison to an equity loss, if things do soften.

I'm thinking I probably would have if I owned that many - I dunno - I only have 4 units with 3 tenants so, not the same comparison at all. 

My backup plan was to stack cash at the rate mentioned above and hopefully have enough for a downpayment (or part of a downpayment + outside investments) in a couple years.For comparison, what do good deals look like in your area?

And that will result in competition for housing.As for prices, by comparison to where I live in NJ, houses in Newark seems cheap!

You just have to be sure that the comparison units that it displays are similar to yours.Also, look on Zillow and Realtor.com for local units that are available for rent.

I saw potential outside of Los Angeles county, pricing points in Lake Elsinore made a lot of sense at the time in comparison to expensive southern California markets.

The goal is to try to get an apples-to-apples com- parison of the selling prices, where the only difference between the properties is the fact that they are being sold as "distressed" sales. 

Below is a comparison of overhead costs of three states with no state income tax.Sources for insurance and property taxes: Insurance - ValuePenguin, State Property Tax Rates - Rocket Mortgage.To show the impact of tax and insurance costs on cash flow, I compared the annual overhead costs of a $400,000 property.To achieve the same level of cash flow as a property in Nevada, you would need to generate a higher cash flow in Texas and Florida to offset the higher operating costs.Texas: The property must generate $5,700 ($9,194 - $3,494) more cash annually to compensate for the higher operating costs in Texas.Florida: The property must generate $2,123 ($5,617 - $3,494) more cash annually to compensate for the higher operating costs in Florida.Overhead costs can have a large impact on cash flow.Invest Where It Leads to Financial FreedomReal estate investing is a business, not unlike a retail store.

(2) What are the standard key metrics that are used for comparing 2 to 4 family investment properties to each other, for the best apples to apples comparison?

And ultimately, if you're going to make a comparison between other investments, like the stock market, ROI is the actual return you make on your investments.