We have 200 pineapple plants, 100 bananas, 100 plaintains, 200 cassava, mangoes, guavas, breadfruit, jackfruit, bunches of other things you have never heard of.  

At the most basic level investing in securities (stocks or bonds) means you are purchasing a small slice of the future economic returns of that company.

@Madhur Dhawan if it could be done, Wall Street would be doing it to scale, slicing and dicing traunches and more.Since the PhD experts working on Wall Street can'tmake it work, anyone else offering it is extremely high risk- think junk bonds.

I've done a bunch of slicing and dicing on government data that tries to measure this for each MSA and come up with rankings for economic strength for each.

However, cash flow is only slice of the time value of money analysis. 

It might have the same cash-flow effect but it wouldn't have the same net worth effect; virtually any way you slice it, owning double or triple the number of properties for the same total equity is going to - over time - increase your net worth by double or triple that of a smaller portfolio of paid-off properties.

@Olga Ford  No matter how you slice it the payments will be higher since the total value of the house would need to be taken on by the grandchildren since they aren't the heirs.

That's simply not an accurate assessment of the Cleveland market any way you slice it.

Anytime we get a call from a tenant we have a handy-man go and assess.

The easiest way is to partner with a homeowner, no closing, no purchase money required just taking a slice of the ownership with a note can do it.