I have also gotten excellent customer service and all questions answered promptly.

This way, when I import it, I can do a quick calculation in Excel for the hundreds of properties and find immediately if there is any equity worth exploring further.

However, with their excellent engineering programs, they attracted a lot more out-of-town students that required housing.

If you plan on using Microsoft Office, it's pretty awkward at editing Excel spreadsheets or Word docs so for those functions, I don't care for it.  

I purchased my first property when interest rates were at 13% and still made an excellent investment (I bought $44,000 and sold it later for $120,000).

He is obviously an excellent promoter, not sure he is a great investor. 

Didn't Sharad from Chicago make this exact same post last year with an accompanying Excel spreadsheet to show roughly the same thing?

I had a one page form built that I have in Google Drive where I enter property info and names and it gets logged to an Excel spreadsheet, where I can then print letters and start my 6 month marketing rotation.

Check it out: http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2009/02/02/real-estate-market-doesnt-recover/ :cool: Excellent article Richard and you're right.

In other words, I can show you a house with a 10% cap rate and it be an excellent investment, and I can show you a house with a 20% cap rate that you will lose your shirt on.So just think of the cap rate as one of the many tools you need to use when considering an investment.