The simple fact is, this is a way to put extra money toward your mortgage balance without accumulating it first.

What are some strategies to accumulate real estate/rental properties to eventually ( 5-10 years) work part time and then quit my job and have passive income?

Assuming an annual 3% NOI increase:Y1 NOI - 206,000 @ a 5% Cap Rate means the property is worth 4.12MMY2 NOI - 212,180 @ 5% Value = 4.24MMY3 NOI - 218,545 @ 5% Value = 4.37MMY4 NOI - 225,101 @ 5% Value = 4.5MMY5 NOI - 231,854 @ 5% Value = 4.64MMYou have accumulated $640,000 in appreciation only equity in 5yrs. 

But don't despair because although this is the case when you look at it myopically, in reality most investors go into multiple deals accumulating 100s of thousands of passive activity losses in their first few years investing.

I have recently paid off my loans for my rental properties and I'm starting to accumulate cash (I took it out of the S&P 500 ETF when it was at 3300, now at 2300, predicting this massive stock drop would happen **pats self on back**).

After spending a few years investing out of state in long term rentals, I realized that I would have to accumulate up to 100+ houses at the infamous “$100/door” target to completely decrease my dependance on my W-2 income.

Accumulate assets to build your passive income.

On the one hand you could buy a turn key duplex or tri plex in Cleveland that cash flows decently, or on the other side of the spectrum you could MOVE to Cleveland, house hack a distressed 4 plex using FHA with 3.5% down (~7k), rehab this (~20k), then refinance out in a year using a local credit union to recover all of your money, all while BRRRR'ing another single fam house, then repeating the following year, to accumulate 15-20 units in a few short years, with the plan being to expand into mid sized multi fam vs syndication after that.

It took me 20 years to accumulate that and if I use past performance to guess at the future value... it doesn’t look good.

I would think if one card is better than another it would be how much better your points accumulate.