What to do with buy and hold

[Cody W.]

As I was pondering today, I was thinking about buy and holds. Do you make money in the end? Say you buy a property for $200k and put $20k down and have a 15yr mortgage. Now if you cash flow $200/mo, obviously you will make money if you own it and cash flow it for 15 yrs+the extra time to pay off the $20k down. But how do you make money if you dont plan on owning it for 15yrs? Sell it for the remainder of the mortgage+extra as profit? I understand how to get money monthly but how do you profit when its all over? Hope my question makes sense. Any help would be great.