@Ryan Hall 1031 exchanges are great until they are not...The concept is great and it works wonderfully in a buyers market where you can find your next deal easily w/o too much competition and if the sale of your property doesn't go through you can negotiate an extension w/o penalty with the seller of your next property. 

I'm a multifamily broker in one of the most competitive multifamily brokerage markets in the country where all the major brokerages have a share (ARA, CBRE, M&M, etc.).

Similar to many other investors out there this year I can no longer find deals on the MLS that are worth doing after the competitive bids start racking up. 

There are good and bad reasons for this, but none of them are encouraging for aspiring landlords.NYC's day of reasonable values could come (I am interested to see what a flood of inventory does to competition).

It's just not worth my time plugging it into my own business model, so there's no way that it'd be worth the time to plug it into the comp models thrown out here.If what you're looking for are houses to buy without the competition of the MLS (there's tons of competition at the auctions, btw), go to a few REIA meetings or search out some wholesalers or keep searching for a quality real estate agent.

Search in competitive areas too to see if you can decipher a value premium for larger homes.

And I have no idea if this sort of thing would qualify, but there are some pretty stringent state laws around holding competitions giving away anything of monetary value.

Higher rents, higher property values, higher competition for an already tight inventory.

Where I'm at in the Bay Area, big money deals are easier to come by as there is less competition for these properties. 

In a fund model the investor makes his money over time and the economics to the managers are in large part directly tied to the return we achieve for our investorsReduced management time / ability to be hands off – we would suggest that for most accredited investors, the amount of time it takes to properly understand and optimize the performance of the business, even if it can be achieved at all from a long distance and without becoming a specialist, is probably better spent on other activitiesBenefit from greater economies of scale than one can achieve with individual purchases – everything from materials purchasing, rehab crews, property management etc.Advantages on debt – specifically: Funds’ debt is non-recourse to investors whereas individuals’ debt is typically fully recourse to their other assets in a worst case scenarioFor many foreign investors debt leverage is not available at all or not on competitive terms, so this is a particular improvement for foreign investorsEnhanced exit scenarios, specifically becoming attractive as an institutional roll-up, with the better potential exit valuation that may drive vs. a one-by-one sale scenarioWe have bought and managed 2000+ homes in a range of markets for institutional investors in the past few years and so definitely bring best-in-class management experience to the venture.