I just saw an 1846 built victorian that was "codexed" into two separate units, on a 12,000 sqft lot which used to have a barn structure, and the agent suggested the best value for the property is a flip with the addition of resurrecting that structure (with approvals - this is a historic district) and turn it into two more condos in the back of the lot.

If I put the money up and place a lien on the house,it's my understanding that before the house can be sold,the lien has to be paid.I'm not worried about the house losing value,because it's in a historic part of the city.

Most 1800's and early 1900's homes are in nice historic areas or in bad parts of town.

Our realtor used comps from a historic district a few blocks over for our purchase which over estimated the ARV by 100k.  

If you put 20% down on a 300,000 property, assuming a 3% interest rate and 4% annual appreciation (which is simply throwing a dart but based on historical appreciation rates), in 8 years you will sell for $410,000. 

to it.. real estate is a long game .. tenant pays off the house that's the ultimate goal get those houses paid for.. not all full of debt and run our numbers at 200 a door times 100 and your going to retire.. some pull it off but not many.. the real profit in rentals is someone else paying your house off for you and at the end of a 15 or 20 year run you have a paid for asset that hopefully went up a bit.For those in CA well you can truly get rich on appreciation and other markets in the US... not so much in areas of historic non appreciation.then you get the Houston thing were act of god wipes you out.. sad but true.

Oh, if it weren't for pesky zoning issues and historic districts.  

When I look at a deal I am paying attention to what rents where 3 years ago and what the historical vacancy is.

If you want to hear all the advantages of San Diego RE you can PM me but suffice to say it has historically produced very good returns and this is verifiable fact (anyone can verify this).However, you do not know whether you plan to stay in San Diego. 

You will see they are investing in the strongest markets, have great broker networks / access to deals which is critical in a highly competitive market, can raise significant capital to take advantage of scale, more disciplined / conservative underwriting models, have simple well thought out business plans to increase the properties value, using fixed rate 10yr loans to take advantage of still incredibly low rates historically speaking and use more sophisticated tool sets to help understand how fluctuations in occupancy, rents, etc may impact their models.