HI Joseph,It may help to find a LO who is well versed in few critical areas:- knows their guidelines and has experience that can be obtained via recommendations, video recommendations, and vet the person online or from social circle /referrals/realtors/etc- invests in real estate themselves and is familiar with your objectives and goals and knows the metrics and terms from which you are determining your objectives- Not completely necessary but if they know how to read and coordinate a cash flow, income statement, and balance sheet it will help to coordinate your objectives as wellRE investors usually present more difficult files especially when the properties and businesses are numerous.

Sales comparable approach is not weighed as heavily as the income approach, though you can look at $/SF as a key metric.

I have no metrics. 

Both extremes are accurate for those individuals making those deals but you certainly don't want to juxtapose those two properties/situations and use a single metric (like cash-on-cash) to decide who is the "smarter" investor or what is the "better" investment.   

I've been looking at City-Data for a few different metrics but had not been looking at renter percentage.

While I have been a RE Investor for 2 Decades, I've seen this metric quite often.

I'm offloading a number of my properties to eliminate headaches, and I've started focusing on a few different metrics (some less measurable than others):-ROE (return on equity)-ROT (return on my time required to manage the property, renovations, or property managers)-ROH (return on headache - my #1 metric.

Tells you how to analyze property, how to make the calculations and what metrics you should aim for.

When these metrics look better than the market norms you know that you have a good deal. 

There's very good Excel sheets available on BP where you can plug in your numbers to understand all the key metrics like Cap Rate, Cash-on-Cash, IRR etc.