Hi Kasey,Just like any other market, there could be many variables that would factor into answering your question.

Many, many variables on what type of property (condo, town, single-family), in a resort-style community or other smaller neighborhood type property, budget, HOA costs, financing type and so much more.

I do the work because I had so many fears when I started, and there were many variables in Real Estate Investing I did not understand.

One nice thing about RE is you can leverage it to some extent too, margin loans are variable rate but running around 3% right now.

It considers the same variables that you and I consider when we are looking to personally live somewhere - schools, crime, services, transportaion systems, etc.

Drilling down to cash management, you'll need to look at cash available after expenses, expenses will then go into cost accounting and allocations of gross income to project, fixed and variable expenses.

The value of the voucher isn't guaranteed the way a fixed income is, it is  a variable guarantee to ensure that the tenant portion of rent is always appropriate. 

With private lending the rate is fixed and should be good if the borrower doesn't default, on a rental there is potential to beat that if you lower your risks through buying in good neighborhoods with good rehabs and great tenants especially when adding in  depreciation on taxes, mortgage interest deductions, appreciation of values, leverage, principal payments, etc, but there are a lot of variables there@Chris ClothierI think even using your numbers of 5k plus 12 months of expenses 12k might be enough (especially if leaning more to a 60k house) but you said it well with, "If at any point you feel that you will be looking for the rent check and sweating its arrival in order to pay bills, then you are definitely not ready to invest." 

As @Minh L. alluded to, if you have deep enough pockets, you can get rock-bottom variable-rate multifamily pricing near 3% in the market right now.

And then you have variable rates, weekdays you will not get close to $225 either.