By looking at the data you will be leaps and bounds ahead of the competition.

Cashflow is hard to come by if you are looking the single family market and like Colin said, multi-family is pretty competitive but not impossible to find.

The two markets you mentioned are very competitive as everyone wants to be in the hottest markets.There are deals to be in every market cycle but not every market.

@Sean Mcentee It's just a really competitive market with too few deals.

In my community, I'm the only property manager that charges leasing fees or lease renewal fees but I provide a large variety of services and better quality services than my competition so it's easy to justify. you need to consider what they are doing in exchange for those fees and determine whether or not the cost is worth it for you.

You can still speak directly to the seller, investors need to put down 20%-25% etc means less competition (usually).

Due to the amount of work required, they didn't qualify for conventional lenders and I didn't have much competition. 

That’s also going to be the most competitive market usually so finding the deal is key. 

To distinguish themselves, it's really about developing competitive advantages.

." - Paul Krugman.Rent control simply does not help anyone but a tiny fraction of renters.