Appreciation is likely to be lower than on developed land, as population/housing is what drives demand in RE.Appreciation itself is speculation, NOT investment. 

It's important to figure out what your business strategy is, and what your value-add proposition is.I know that folks have been successful in each one of these niches in Philly real estate, just depends on what you are looking to do (in no particular order and just off the top of my head, I'm sure that I'm leaving a bunch out): low-income rentals, luxury rentals, flips, vacant land speculation, new construction, section 8/PHA rentals, wholesaling, wholetailing, bird dogging, turn key sales, property management, construction management, financing expert, zoning expert, title expert, business procedure consulting, hard money lending, seller financing, buying subject-to, syndicating deals, 1031 exchange scout, retail sales, etc.Personally, I've set up a pretty decent rental portfolio over the last few years, that's what made sense for my investing goals and setup. 

It sounds like you'll lose some value based on the speculative nature of the properties that can be converted to single family homes.

War stories and simple camaraderie, decorating / upgrade ideas, speculation on trends.. this is good stuff for a coffee/beer for sure - just don't underestimate your reach merely because you're a few hours (or days) away.

I speculate, that in my market, the tenants enlisting realtors are actively looking for a home (unlikely to renew) and want to get there roots down in the town while they shop.- another animal of course if you enlist a realtor...

I know there’s some level of speculation with appreciation.

Obviously everything here is purely my opinion and speculation.

Is it too much speculation to expect to go in expecting to raise rents to bring up the cash flow.

That is a serious accusation, and you make it with pure speculation and ignorance.

I always recommend finding something with predictability, not speculative neighborhoods or "pigs" marketed as "cash-cows."