Personally I am gambling and holding out for a while longer 

@Babu Ramadoss you're going to get the it depends answer. it depends on your short and long term goals. many will say chasing appreciation is gambling like the stock market. others say cash is king and never put your money where roi is not maximized. personally, my goal is replacing w2 income in 7 years so cashflow is king for me. that also means I need to use less leverage with lower roi, or do more brrr which would like take longer based on what I buy. your market will likely dictate one or other, and for the record I ignore appreciation in my underwriting as a buy and hold investor. the appreciation will never be realized until I refi out down the road.

This was obviously a bit of a gamble because the house had to appraise above a certain figure in effort to remove the PMI but we chose to do it anyway because the rate reduction in and of itself was worth the cost/effort of the refi.

Appreciation potential is gambling as far as I'm concerned.

New restaurants (mostly Denver-based establishments, which I have to point out as a Denver snob now living in Colorado Springs), a sports venue, higher end apartments. 

It's too much of a gamble for us not to take it and keep it separate in case of need. 

No offense, but it sounds like there is a lot of learning that needs to happen, plus MF is a team sport. 

I’m not so risk adverse that I don’t want to buy something in the next 12 months, but I don’t want to gamble it all away by being over leveraged.

When my kids were at sports practices i would go for a 2 hour walk a couple times a week to go street by street to feel the neighborhoods. 

The area is always expanding the business district as well as downtown, from Access to low cost regional talent, competitive real estate cost, strong work ethics and excellent facilities for sports, shopping, leisure and healthcare.