By comparison - If a landlord has a bad year does he only have to pay 80% of his prop taxes?

@Joseph CrunkiltonExcel is great to track income and expenses on a annual basis.However, if you want to run reports or if you want to do a comparison, I feel like you want to run it through an accounting software such as quickbooks, stessa, etc.

By comparison, this sounds like a more advantageous situation than buying out of state. 

-Nick@Ernesto Hernandez @James Wise  Basic source i use for national comparison is https://www.thumbtack.com/prices.https://www.homeadvisor.com/r/true-cost-of-home-im...https://www.fixr.com/costGuides.htmlhttps://www.improvenet.com/r/costs-and-prices/remo...

Personally I use ActiveCampaign for my biz list (not specifically RE) because it's not too expensive for a small list (I pay $16/mo) but has more features and ability to make more advanced automated sequences.

found a really cool piece of property with a small pond on it and know it would be great to develop it into a small subdivision. have a comparison to a Ryan's home property being developed and per arce the cost is the same.

I would encourage you to look around and talk to many sources so you can use them as a base of comparison.

While analyzing other markets is important for comparison purposes, starting out, one of your best options is going to be house-hacking if you don't plan on moving because you'll be better able to manage the property for very little yourself while learning.

However, if I’m not mistaken, cap rates take these expenses into account, and cap rates under 10% just don’t look like good deals to me, in comparison to SFH returns (at least those I have access to).

Austin’s status as a technology hub along with its high concentration of venture capital, warm climate and vibrant cultural offerings lead to frequent comparisons with the Bay Area – and in fact, high-profile Silicon Valley companies, including Amazon, Google, Oracle and Tesla, have recently expanded their operations in Austin," the report reads in part.Articles below detail the economic growth of major metroplexes in the US and Austin comes in at number 2 on the list.