One thing I wanted to hit on was the REIT average price - sounds like this data was largely gathered from pretty high-end residential REITs, no?

I am thinking about investing in some longterm buy and hold rentals and was wondering what people are averaging or looking to get for cash flow in the Northwest area of Atlanta.

Pulled actual taxes history, and got an insurance quote so my numbers would be as close to reality as possible.I pulled up as many sales as I could find in the area going back 2 years for similar units (2 bedroom/1 bath) and found average price is $37,500 per unit.  

Vacancy rates across the state are between 1 and 2% on average suggesting low vacancy risk.

A 5% vacancy is your tenant staying for an average of 20 months. 

This is something worth asking the agent who will be representing you (unless you have a license and are representing yourself), it lets you know the average vacancy for that price point and kinds of people applying.

In agree with Trent, I like to simplify the ROI and inflation rate on how I calculate it and see it.We have a average inflation rate of 2%.

After averaging all these out I came up with a 40% credit off of all utilities for the top unit.What are your thoughts?

That would allow me to filter by property specs and get an average or range.I realize what you are doing is meant to be high level, but my thought is if you have the data anyways, maybe you could dump it into state specific spreadsheets for people to use.

New listings were actually up 11.21% to 4,982, however the rolling 12 month average is still down 3.98% so this is a just blip in what is an otherwise shrinking market.