to make it more difficult, I got my family of 6 move in with relatives in Virginia.feel free to question my intelligence 

Plus the cost of most things goes up over time.

Are you sure the landlord collected May rent or maybe used one months free rent as an enticement to rent the property?

They want instant gratification.It's a cold world though, you ain't getting that without a cost.

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Just to give you an example of the type of thing you'd be potentially looking out for, if the community has a pool terrace planned and it's orientation in the new building would face directly towards your property, that could be a source of significant noise and disturbance for you/your tenants, and could make it much harder to sell your property once the new building is built and occupied.On the positive side, new apartment buildings cost millions of dollars to develop and build, and developers really only sink that much money into areas where they're forecasting rent growth and property appreciation for their investment.  

My thoughts from the little I know about the raw numbers however:1) You have no reason to not raise the rent at least a small amount to compensate for the extra cost of ownership the past few years.

Just think about this, every 12-15 years you live expect 40-50% more in costs of everything.

My recommendation would be to own residential first so you have a much better understanding of the costs to own real estate.

Excel can easily do all this.You can likely download a free template that already has all the formulas you need.