Atlanta Investing: Do Deals vary THAT much State to State?

[Morris Lucas]

Okay, so i have heard REI is very territorial, and you have to know YOUR market.
My issue is I can't figure out why investors pay so much more in other areas other than in my area of Atlanta....
For example, I have heard local investors here all say you can find deals from 5k to 40k all day long...Some of these actually can rent for 7-900 per month...
As a matter of fact, my coworker just closed on his first house as an owner occupant for 32,000, it's in a decent working class neighborhood subdivision and was built in 2002...wtf? SFH at that....
Then I read on the forums that people from Texas, Va, Fl, AZ, etc, are having to pay 70-100k to get the same cashflow per month.
Some of the properties here in the 30-40k range are not "war zones" so it cannot be that reason that they are lower compared to other regions.So my question is, can inventory prices really be that different depending on where you are(ignoring the extremes of NY and CA), i mean, it just seems confusing some investor is paying almost double elsewhere for the same monthly rent, for example. Or am i just missing something about these 30k prices here that is negative(bad schools, hard to sell, frequent vacancy)?

My other question, sort of related is:
I see investors always hope for a 10-12% return when holding property, say house is bought at 100k, they want 10-12k per year at least, right?
This leads me to question if RE is the BEST cashflowing investment? The reason i ask is I know a few car lot owners who can do 10k a MONTH with less than 50k in vehicle inventory, and a few more folks who buy and sell electronics in bulk who do about half that...so is the average return on RE(not the home runs) really that good compared to other investments, or is it the passiveness of renting and appreciation that makes it attractive?

Sorry for the long post....