Visually Analyzing Rental Property Deals

[Ethan S.]

Hello all, first time poster here.

I've recently been looking into rental property investing and after watching several videos and reading blogs, I'm still confused on one thing: how to visually analyze a deal.

All the videos and blogs talk about analyzing the numbers. How much money/return you could get, but they never talk about visually analyzing the deal.

What I mean by this is looking at the property, and the area around it, and letting that factor into your overall analysis. Maybe you find a property where the numbers check out, but how do you then determine if you will be able to find tenants (and good tenants at that), as well as determine if it will do well in the long-term.

I want to purchase my first rental property in the range of $40-65k back in my home town in Alabama where I have family still living. (I can't buy where I currently live because it is insanely expensive).

I see several houses for sale in this price range, and all of them look to be big-time fixer-uppers, which is totally fine, but I'm not sure how to analyze the area around the house, the other houses near it, the location, and determine if it would perform well.