My Illinois ground cash rents fine but I am seriously looking at Florida SFRs and the state comparison math is messier than I expected

The roof exclusion on a 2006 build is the number that decides the deal, not the cap rate.

Before committing to either market, confirm whether the Decatur Township duplex is in a flood-designated area, because Indiana does have FEMA-mapped zones and the 139k price range often sits near drainage corridors. Pull the FEMA flood map portal with the parcel number before you treat the 900-dollar insurance quote as settled. Also ask whether that 1,550 combined rent is current or proforma, because Decatur Township has seen softer absorption on the west side and a vacant unit there pencils very differently than 7.8. On the Florida side, the carve-out you described is showing up more on admitted carriers and the surplus lines market is pricing full wind coverage on pre-2010 builds at a level that often moves the effective cap 80 to 120 basis points below what the listing implies, which tracks exactly with what you found. The insurance picture is the correct thing to wait on. What is the current lease status on the Indianapolis duplex, month-to-month or term?

The assumption doing the most work in your Florida numbers is that the insurance quotes you received are representative of what you can actually place at close. They are not, necessarily. Carriers are still non-renewing books in certain Florida counties, and a quote today from a surplus lines carrier does not guarantee that coverage is available at the same terms in 60 days when you are at the table. That gap between quote and bindable policy is where Florida deals have blown up for buyers who did their math correctly and still got surprised.

Your Auburndale wind exclusion on a 2006 roof is the right thing to flag. A 15-year age threshold is increasingly standard language in Florida, and on a single-family where the roof is the primary weather envelope, an excluded peril is a structural hole in your coverage, not a pricing adjustment. Your NOI math should reflect either the cost of a full replacement before close or the actuarial exposure of carrying that gap, and most buyers are doing neither.

The Indianapolis duplex comparison is cleaner because the risk profile is cleaner. A 7.8 cap with sub-900 insurance and a 60-day eviction timeline is a materially different asset than a 6.2 cap with open-ended insurance exposure and a landlord-tenant environment still finding its footing after the 2023 reforms. Those are not just different numbers, they are different categories of operational certainty.

One structural risk you have not mentioned: Florida's homestead exemption dynamics create a property tax reset at sale that can significantly change the tax basis for a new buyer. Confirm with a Florida-licensed CPA what the assessed value resets to on your specific targets, because the 1.1 percent figure you pulled from comps may reflect the prior owner's capped assessed value, not what you will actually owe in year one.

On the buyer's agent side: if you are working Florida and Indiana simultaneously and pulling your own comps, you are spending real time on sourcing and diligence that a market-specific agent who works investor clients should be doing for you. Are you currently working with investor-focused representation in either market, or doing this solo?

Your underwriting is doing exactly what it should. The insurance carve-out on wind damage for pre-2007 roofs is a real structural issue in Florida right now, not a negotiating footnote. Several carriers that re-entered the state after 2022 are writing policies with those exclusions as standard language, which means you can pass inspection, close, and still be holding a property that is effectively uninsured for its most common catastrophic risk.

A few things worth confirming before you rule Florida out entirely. Ask any Florida carrier you talk to specifically whether they will write replacement cost coverage (meaning they pay to rebuild, not just current depreciated value) on a 2006 roof without a wind exclusion, and what a full replacement of that roof would cost as a condition of getting clean coverage. Some investors in that market are negotiating seller credits at closing to re-roof before they take title, which changes the math but at least closes the coverage gap.

On the Indianapolis side, your 7.8 cap on a 139k duplex at combined rent of 1,550 is worth stress-testing at a vacancy assumption. If one unit sits empty for 60 days in a year, how does the cap rate move? That one number often separates a deal that feels solid from one that actually is.

The thing you have not mentioned yet is what structure you are planning to use when you buy out of state. That affects your tax exposure in both states, and it is a question for a CPA who works with real estate investors across state lines, not something to sort out at closing.

One question that would help me give you a more useful answer: are you planning to self-manage these out-of-state properties, or are you budgeting for a property manager?

The 60-day Marion County number is the one I would verify with an actual attorney before it shows up in a proforma.

The real comparison to make here is not Florida versus Indiana on cap rate alone, it is insured NOI stability versus headline yield, because the 6.2 and 7.8 are not measuring the same quality of income stream. The Indiana duplex at 139k carries an insurance load under 900 a year, no wind carve-outs, and a court timeline you can actually model in a worst-case scenario. The Florida SFR at a 6.2 cap is giving you a yield that assumes the carrier's exclusions never get tested, and if a named storm touches that 2006 roof, you absorb the replacement cost that the policy just told you it will not cover. That is not a risk premium baked into the cap rate, it is a risk that simply does not appear in the pricing, which is structurally different.

Where Florida wins is when you buy a newer build inside a market with HOA-maintained exteriors or when you can source a carrier writing full wind coverage because the property meets current opening-protection standards, typically 2002 or later build in a county that adopted the Florida Building Code at adoption, though you need to confirm what Polk County's specific adoption timeline looked like. An investor who buys a 2022 construction SFR in a subdivision with a commercial master wind policy layered over an individual dwelling policy and rents to a tenant who clears 3.5x rent is holding a fundamentally different instrument than what you underwrote in Auburndale. The Indiana duplex wins on current numbers given what you described, and it wins cleanly. The question I would want answered before you go further is whether the 1,550 combined rent in Decatur Township has any single-tenant concentration risk, meaning if one unit turns, what does the carrying cost look like against that 139k basis while you lease