I'm currently looking into motels and wondering what red flags I need to be most conscious of in the evaluation phase.

I have no personal interest in being a landlord,but if I did,would begin by learning the MF brokerage business.From there,you have the platform to both evaluate properties and solicit investors.

Avi,Try reading in the Landlording forum to get a feel for how to evaluate rentals; that should help you with this quad-plex.

An ESTIMATE you can use for evaluating the deal is that the NOI will be 50% of the gross scheduled rent.

And if this kind of Top Ten List already exists, please let me know.I realize no place will score a "10" on each point, but I want to use the list to evaluate each place:-low sales tax-low property tax-low wealth tax (or is it called personal property tax eg appliances, etc.)

If you cannot, and the property is over-leveraged as you stated it could be, you are in a dangerous position.I hope this at least gives you a few things to consider when you evaluate the deal.Chris Chris

Plenty of info on this site on instruction on how to evaluate properties from cash flow perspectives.

But you should still include these costs in evaluating the deal.

On a standard purchase you would evaluate the property using the NOI and cap rate, but that factors in the purchase price.

As far as your market goes, you should stick close to home in the beginning until you have the confidence to evaluate an investment properly.