although that link has ie tail, it is not the irish Mail on Sunday. It is the UK version, which in my opinion was always a better paper. the irish version is almost pure <>. My fear/concern is that if something looks too good, it probably is useless. yields of 20/30% pa on these houses cannot be true.
I was in Northern NY last week (interesting week to be in the US). Yields around Rochester, particularly more upmarket areas like Pittsford and Fairport, are pretty decent (8 - 10%). You'd need to be very choosy though as there's a lot of poor quality product in bad areas on the market. The commercial market also seems to be performing well. The biggest problem to date has been getting funding from the banks. Perhaps this will change but I'd say it will take a while. Funding for buy-to-let is likely to get more expensive with lower LTV's in the short term as the banks seek to raise the quality of the loans on their books.
Gross yields can be quoted high on very risky product, I'd be careful to be honest. If quoted yields are too high you're probably dealing in a marginal area with high levels of mortgage default, consequently plenty of empty buildings in the environs, risky tenant pool, etc.