She may be able to answer a lot of questions for you.Also,In a number crunch of 300 cities using 10 metrics ranging from home prices to tax rates to vacancy levels, WalletHub determined that Montgomery, Alabama, was the nation’s most affordable city for homebuyers.

Me too.. work there but dont own any .. location is the metric period in my mind..

One metric for determining the economic health of a metro area is inflation-adjusted median household income.

Ergo, cashflow can be an illusory metric in many ways when you invest in single-family, especially the C/D classes.

Do you HAVE to be fully aware of all the metrics and calculations that go into buying properties for profit before you buy?

Have investors become so savvy that they know what 2-3 metrics matter and only focus on them?

NOw I can see Engineer types or digging it.. but really its all about a decent house and decent tenants.. no more complicated than that.And if your trying to establish markets that are up and comers those are different metrics and usually are not cash flow markets...

I hear great things about Cleveland, and Detroit has strong metrics for CFs, though I've heard some not so great things about the experience of a landlord in Detroit. 

For example, short-term works very well in vacation markets and can work in metro markets; medium-term works best in metro markets with hospitals; rent-by-room works best in markets with lots of young professionals or military.In our case, we wanted to use the rent-by-room strategy, so we selected Colorado Springs because of the young professional/military presence and because we could qualify for the houses.Then you will want to start analyzing properties in that market to ensure that you can hit the metrics you want, get connected with an agent (investor friendly) to start discussions about the market, and get connected with a lender to verify what you can be pre-approved for!

Therefore, a critical location selection metric is that rents and prices are rising faster than inflation.