Last year, real estate values were up 6.8% and far out performed other investment avenues such as S&P, Dow Jones, Nasdaq, silver and gold.

So far I have outperformed that, but I also do a lot of the CapEx up front as part of my business plan as these are value add deals. 

I used to use a form letter, but always wondered if a yellow letter out performed?

That has significantly outperformed the last 2 years but no reason to believe that WORSE case is that it returns back to those levels.

Still made a few buck but just not worth it.My SFHs have out performed the duplexes over the years by 50% to double, and attract MUCH better tenants.Just food for thought.

The primary goal is to have a vehicle that would hopefully out perform SP 500.

Good locations, cash flow, value add, prudent debt, reserves.quality locations while they may not look best on paper usually out perform others in times of stress.One thing I think most of the " waiting for the bubble to burst crowd"s  fails to understand that if you do have a major correction the capital markets can correct right along with them .. so while credit is relatively easy right now for mom and pop get into buying a few rentals folks.. this may not be the case..

I personally hire a home staging company on higher end property's especially if I have a kick-*** home that we want to "out perform" the market on.

Good areas, good houses, and good tenants will always outperform on paper "cash cows"

I don’t see things getting better anytime soon as if you look at economic trends interest rates are stabilized for the time being, we are seeing increased job losses and inflation outperforming wages which eventually will cause more pain.Ie: things are getting worse before they get better