Follow-on, any recommendations on current attractive RE investment strategies are also welcome.

If you have five houses with $200,000 equity, that's a cool million.

Maybe never in CO but other areas have seen it happen.Personally I am always trying to tell others that they need to look carefully in any area no matter how attractive the deals are.I agree that you need to work with an agent who knows the lay of the land.

And a lot of start-up companies are migrating to this city as well because of the OSU campus that has thousands of talented students graduating and looking for positions locally.Everything that’s going on here in Columbus is attracting investors and other businesses from all over.

Those areas usually attract crappy tenants who don't pay rent. 

Competitors, local events that attract crowd, pricelabs, seasonality, weather events, your unit profile..

There are handful of crowdfunding lending companies emerged lately.They all seem to share a need to be an accredited investor to start investing.In order for an individual to qualify as an accredited investor, he or she must accomplish at least one of the following:1) earn an individual income of more than $200,000 per year, or a joint income of $300,000, in each of the last two years and expect to reasonably maintain the same level of income.2) have a net worth exceeding $1 million, either individually or jointly with his or her spouse.3) be a general partner, executive officer, director or a related combination thereof for the issuer of a security being offered.How strict is the accreditation requirement is being followed?

He went from being a volunteer baseball coach to overseeing a two hundred million real estate empire.

If I went to the investor and said "hey, I'll pay you $x amount per month to keep living here with the intention of buying it later" would that be an attractive offer?

Either way its 100s and 100s of thousands or millions of dollars.