I ran the same buy-and-hold screen I did for Cleveland and Toledo on every active Birmingham-area listing from $60k to $600k, pulled Oct 23. That's 1,650 listings. The assumption I trust least is insurance, and local owners know it better than any dataset.

Assumptions: 25% down at 7% on a 30-year, 3% closing, 8% vacancy plus 2% bad debt, 7% repairs, 8% capex and 10% management. Rents come from HUD's fair market rents, discounted and capped at Zillow's rent index. Taxes are at the rental rate inside city limits. I ran insurance two ways: the Alabama average scaled to the house plus 20% for a landlord policy, and a flat $1,500 a year.

What came out:

• 325 of 1,650 cash flow with scaled insurance, and 59 clear $200 a month at 8% cash-on-cash. At a flat $1,500, it's 303, with 39 clearing that bar.

• Nearly everything that worked is under $150k. Nothing over $200k passed.

• The 1% rule fooled me again. A good share of houses that hit it still lost money.

• The typical passer clears about $90–115 a month. Thin.

Stress test: 5% bad debt, 10% lower rent and 25% higher insurance all at once. 141 still cash flow (87 at $1,500). Lower rent hurts the most on its own.

This is buy-and-hold at list price with no rehab, so it's a different question from @Idan Deutsch's BRRRR screen here a few months back, where none of 350 passed. Both point the same way: cheap houses can cash flow, but the margin is thin and depends on numbers you have to check locally, starting with a real insurance quote.

Two things I'd like from people who own here:

1. What does a landlord policy run you on a $70–100k house? Under $1,500 or over?

2. What do rehabbed 3-beds actually rent for in 35211 and 35208?

I built this screen through my business, Row Home Solutions. Throw me better insurance numbers and I'll rerun it.

Thomas