We got a decent # of requests but our booking rate was about 5-10% of the requests. 

More affordable properties may cash flow well but take longer to scale.Rental rates in your market: Locations with higher rents (e.g. $2k/month) will require fewer properties than areas with lower rent (e.g. $800/month).

In my market, once rates come down, prices are going to shoot up, we just don't know when.

A year and a half ago I bought a house in cash to avoid a +7% interest rate on my mortgage. 

↓The bank receives a fixed rate return↓And the investors keep all the upside!

Interest rate at 10%.  20 year fully amortized.3.

If you cash out 100% of your funds, you are most likely not going to cash flow with how high the rate would be. 

How is the crime rates?

so most people will have to be as leveraged as possible to scale (at the beginning). as in, keep your LTV high and focus on buying 'as much' ($$) RE as possible. this is if you're doing a pretty run of the mill REI strategy like buy and hold. i came across an interesting guideline once: if you could sell today and net 7x+ your annual true net cashflow, you should cash-out/refi, or sell/1031. think of it this way: if your portfolio in a year is worth 1m market value, and you owe 600k, and have a lender that will do a portfolio loan at 80% ltv, you could cashout refi and get 200k to play with (minus closing costs). when you compare the now-lower cashflow from the existing portfolio (higher LTV & maybe different rate), to what you can do with 200k cash, THAT'S where it gets fun. maybe you lose 1k/mo in cashflow on the original portfolio (literally just made up a number, idk), but you can gain 2500/mo in cashflow with that 200k.. then doing the cashout/refi earned you a net increase in your monthly profit of 1500/mo, plus you're getting debt paydown and appreciation on "more" real estate, probably getting bigger tax benefits, etc.

They are good at what they do but interest rates have been scaring off potential buyers.