Age is a factor as well, a 40 year old can recover from a disaster and rebuild their empire.

The best advise i can give you is to remember that the money in a deal is made when you purchase the property, especially when it comes to military investors as your situation will change (PCS/Deployment etc...) which will cause your cost to rise, make sure you factor in these cost when you are looking at the property and base the deal on those expenses to make sure it works both now and in the future. 

Since I do not have the 20% DP, I do understand that PMI plays a big factor when looking at "Cashflow" or breaking even. 

NEWBIE here! The most intriguing part about Real Estate Investing is the property management aspect and maintaining a great tenant/owner experience. My background is in HR and recruiting and the idea of sourcing and ...

I know this varies based on several factors, but just looking for an idea.

You can get training, support, and mentorship without having to go in to an office these days so that's not a factor.

Jake,It sounds like the limiting factor on your file will be a combination of debt to income (dti) ratio and loan to value (ltv).There are many lenders out there but the majority of them have underwriting overlays that create more hurdles for borrowers to jump through.You and every other investor needs to work with a lender that only underwrites to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae's base underwriting guidelines.All of that being said, for a conventional mortgage, Fannie and Freddie are currently limiting the maximum LTV to 80% for a cash out refinance on a single family home. 

Since we include all utilities, it is a drawing factor for our units. 

Armand, PMI with a higher rate vs no PMI with a lower rate depends on how fast the property appreciates as well as how long you plan to keep the mortgage and many other factors. 

The relationship between the two is essentially that CoC takes into account the annual financing costs (annual investment), while cap rates don't.I'd definitely recommend familiarizing yourself with the BP calculators which will show you how to use and understand both these factors in your initial analysis.