I wouldn’t call myself “wealthy” by comparison standards, but I’ve made a lot of progress on net worth over the last 5 years.

It is a get rich slower scheme, but with less risk.How do you figure a paid-off property throws off more cash (per month, yes, but in comparison to how much you put down?)

When you put in the COMPLETE math there is no comparison between real estate and wall street, real estate blows the doors off wall street every time. 

I'd rather see a comparison of dollar amounts rather than percentages - they may have similar percents but the absolute dollar amounts should be quite different.  

The Sierras suck the rain out of the storms so it has the 1000s of lakes and the area to the east of them are dryer (not the same)living in San Diego versus arizona or utah is no comparison weather wise.  

For example, I imagine in a market like Detroit, a neighborhood, at-large, may be filled with mostly Class A properties (in comparison to the rest of the surrounding suburb and/or city); but, I would think that the quality of these properties can be further subdivided within themselves too.

My spreadsheet also includes FMV of every property so I can monitor appreciation, year over year comparison of tax & insurance increases, current rent & last increase & last amount, etc.

I personally think that the right comparison is against the later example, since the cash flows are similar in each period.

@William J Anderson with anything, you'll probably want a summary/overview report and then another for a deep dive as needed.You'll want the summary report to be your go-to, preferrably showing month-by-month for comparison purposes. 

But to put that in comparison, my portfolio of single / multi-family rentals is doing 23% cash on cash return - and I have COMPLETE control of it.