Do you ever see Kansas City becoming over saturated with investors and with continual tech boom going on, are you worried about sudden increases of cost of living in comparison to places like San Fran and Boulder, CO?

The money this person is going to lose trying to flip a house in a questionable buy and hold area will pale in comparison to the commission that would have been paid to get a quality cash flowing property in a decent location.Have you identified any areas of interest?

Had the same sequence of problems and it was highlighted by the appraiser. 

I don't know if this is a good way to make the comparison, but I will tell you for the hours I spend managing my portfolio of 10 Class B (and some are probably A) properties, you make a LOT of money for the small amount of time spent because of the Mortgage Paydown.

You have to have contractors if you aren't handy with a hammer, you need to buy well below what you will sell it for, you have to be able to accurately estimate what it will eventually sell for, you have to consider acquisition costs, rehab costs, carrying costs, selling costs, prepare for 6 months on average from start to finish, you need to know about title reports, appraisals, escrow, lenders, insurance, sequence of rehab lists, "oops" surprises, market changes, level of finish, what other rehabbers are using for materials, and realize that contractors don't always show up or finish what they start.

All this data can be found by a local realtor or by going to realtor.com > and searching on "recently sold" properties.Appraisals are very subjective depending on what other properties they use for comparison. 

As humans, we tend to make comparisons and look back with 20/20 hindsight thinking the path not chosen would've been better. 

Consider smaller towns in the suburbs of Tampa and run the numbers on them as a comparison.

It supposedly takes about the same amount of time to close big deals in comparison to small deals.

The better comparison when evaluating what to invest a tax-sheltered retirement plan into is what else the plan could be investing in, and where you can find the best overall mix of security and income production.