Numbers making zero sense, need help

[Account Closed]

I'm in Rochester, NY looking for my 2nd SFH rental. Been searching now for about 6 months and the numbers simply do not make sense unless purchasing with cash, which I am not. Meanwhile the housing prices continue to skyrocket. Is this all just a racket and I need to wait for some economic collapse? Because going by the 50% or 2% rule in my market here would be definitely impossible unless purchasing with cash or renting for $300 more than market rates.

I'm a maintenance professional so I don't mind doing some work. That said, my range is $80-105k, but really anything under 95k is gonna need a ton of work which I can't justify. So if I buy a house at $100k and rent it for $1,350 that's probably $400 cashflow after PMI. Now I used to think that was solid for a rental property. But after reading more from some on here, that'd be a big mistake.

Going by the 2% rule I’d need to rent out that $100k house for minimum $1,500/mo which for a 1,000sqft house just isn’t happening. The market is incredibly competitive, the best deal I’ve had that fell through was for a $97k house that needed minimal work and could have rented for $1,300/mo. I thought that woulda been solid, so what am I missing here? 

[Russell Brazil]

Yield is a measure of risk in the asset or market.  Its an important concept for people to wrap their mind around.  So a property that yields 2%, is riskier than a property that yields 1% etc.  This is a fundamental rule to investing across all types of assets, stocks, bonds, real estate etc.  If you want greater yield, then you need to take on a riskier asset or riskier market.