Fewer big investments or lots of small ones?

[Brandon Scott]

I've been looking at real estate in the silicon valley area, and I was just wondering what everyone's thoughts were on buying a more expensive multi-family here vs lots of cheaper ones elsewhere.  To make it a little more concrete, say you can get a 4 unit here for $1mil and rent it for $15,000/month, or you could go buy ten similar houses elsewhere for $100k each and also rent them for $15,000/month. 

Assuming all the total numbers work out the same just to isolate the "number of houses" variable, what are the pros/cons of going with a single large investment vs multiple small ones?  Which would you choose?