Rental investing, by the numbers

The traits that make a market cash flow, the classic Midwest and Southern metros that keep producing deals, and where to see live underwritten numbers by city.

The exact numbers to check before buying a rental: rent, operating expenses, debt service, and the cash flow math that decides whether a deal is worth your money.

The classic screening rule says monthly rent should be 1% of the purchase price. Here is what it gets right, where it fails at today's rates, and what to use instead.

Cash-on-cash return measures what your rental actually pays you on the money you put in. The formula, a worked example, benchmarks, and the mistakes that inflate it.

Duplexes usually win the cash flow math while single-family homes win on simplicity and exit options. A side-by-side comparison for first-time rental investors.

Rent is the number every other number depends on. How to build a defensible rent estimate from actual rents, comparables, AVMs, and HUD data, and the traps that inflate it.

HOA fees are contractual, rising, and uncancelable, which makes them different from every other expense in a rental underwrite. How to price them in and when to walk.

Cap rate measures the property; cash-on-cash measures your deal. What each metric is for, how financing drives them apart, and which one should rank your pipeline.

A one-point rate move can add or erase over $100 of monthly cash flow on a typical rental loan. How to re-derive your maximum price, target markets, and property types from the current rate.

HUD publishes rent data for every ZIP code and bedroom count in the country, free. What Fair Market Rents actually measure, how to use them as a screening tool, and their known biases.