Okay, so....am I just missing something really obvious here?
I am so close to FI, but one more rental that cashflows moderately (~$400-500) would put me solidly there. So I found myself on Zillow, browsing the housing markets. Here in Colorado Springs, the prices are too high for my budget, so I started looking elsewhere, and stumbled into the midwest (Wisconsin, Ohio, etc).
It appears that I can buy a duplex in, say, Oshkosh near UWO for about $80k and rent it for ~$1400 gross. Following the 50% rule, that's $700/mo cashflow. I could do a similar thing in Cleveland.
This seems a bit too good to be true-- good cashflow? Only $80k? I back-of-the-enveloped mortgage, taxes (higher than here, for sure), insurance, management, and rehab/maintenance, and the numbers still look pretty good. But....if these are as good of a deal as they seem, why aren't they all bought up already?
Two thoughts occur to me: (1) I'm missing something that scares off more local/diligent investors, like hidden repair costs; or (2) these "good deals" are mediocre in comparison to the other opportunities that I'm not seeing, and the investors aren't buying these okay deals, because there are bigger/better fish to fry if you know what you're doing.