What you would be looking to decrease is your appraisal / assessment.

And having some education about what makes a good rental property and increases/decreases risk, so you can minimize your overall risk.

@Mike D'Arrigo My rent sources are as follows:Rentometer: Median for a 4 bed is 1100CL: 3 beds around the area go for 700-800.Seller's agent says this house rents between 900-1000.I went with $800 as a conservative number, but the plan here would be to start at 1000 and start slowly decreasing the rent if there's no interest at that price.

After talking with the seller last night she refuses to decrease the price at all.

You also run the risk, granted decreasing as time goes on, that there could be damage in excess of the remaining deposit and they could walk and you are in no better position.Just explicitly state in the lease that the ETF is one month of rent or if you prefer, have it declining over time that the lease has been in place.For an overview from the state of the relevant laws:http://www.dca.ca.gov/publications/landlordbook/ca...Two books I found helpful is Leigh Robinson's book http://www.landlording.com and Nolo's Tax Deduction guide for Landlords.

It's a 4plex with one unit being a 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom unit (Very large overall).We would be renting a combo of per room, and maybe offer two to a room for a decreased rate.

I balance that with mortgage/insurance costs and throw in some speculation on property values increasing/decreasing and add a pinch of intuition.

Do you go for 100% occupancy and let the 50% rule eat vacancy or do you use a decrease occupancy when you first run the 1% rule?

View interactive map displaying SFR returns in all 375 counties analyzed.Rental yields decrease in 57 percent of marketsMedian sales prices for single family homes rose faster than average fair market rents in 213 of the 375 counties (57 percent), resulting in declining gross annual rental yields in the same percentage of counties.Counties with the declining gross annual rental yields included Los Angeles County, California; Cook County, Illinois, in the Chicago metro area; Maricopa County, Arizona in the Phoenix metro area; Miami-Dade County, Florida; and Queens County, New York.MethodologyFor this report, ATTOM Data Solutions looked at all U.S. counties with a population of 100,000 or more and with sufficient home price and rental rate data.

Rents will increase but as they do it's likely the purchasing power of that $24K will decrease.