Is there a way to short-list based on total assets or historical IRR?

Julie Marquez  one thing your giving up and is one the the most important aspects of real estate ownership to those of us who live on the West coast and in higher priced historically appreciating markets is the owner occ 250 single and 500k married TAX FREE gain you get when you sell your primary and you only have to live in it 2 years and you can do it as many times as you can through your life.

Numbers should be based on long term historical averages and actuals, not hopes and dreams or doomsday fears (though you should be as well prepared for both as possible).

However, historically, we have been very patient investors so when we have used financing the amount has been very minimal.

Get the historical T12 (trailing 12 month profit & loss statements) and rent roll, and compare to the norm for the area.

@David Villa Nashville is still booming and hitting historical highs in real estate.

The title says it all assuming you can get back 7% on stock gains yearly, going by current trends this seems extremely conservative, companies today seem to be growing much faster than the historical data we usually reference for average returns.

Check on the crime stats and the historic rents .

Leveraging the property with a long term mortgage allows the investorTake maximum cash out using stable fundsAllows the investor to take advantage of the lowest interest rates we've seen in generations (probably redundant to the first one, but the leg up investors have when using loan products that are both stable and have historically low interest rates can't be stressed enough)HELOC's on investor properties are much more difficult to get than a cash out refinanceThere are myriad loan products to use for long term wealth; conventional, DSCR and even interest onlyMany people recommend using a HELOC for their first investment property because most investors (yes, a sweeping generality) own their primary residence and it's fairly easy to leverage that property with a HELOC. 

Case Shiller has historical profit metrics for buy n hold RE for all major cities.