Given that you can't go further east because of the lake, and you can't really go north because that's all already expensive all the way to Evanston, and people won't keep going west when there is cheap RE along the lake going south, it seems likely that over maybe a 20 year horizon, the odds favor appreciation in this area.

I'm from Phoenix, so I understand what you mean about not really needing heat.However, I struggle to understand why you wouldn't improve the property through adding appliances that would increase the rent from "very low for the neighborhood" to a rate that makes up for the appliance cost, increases property value, and adds profit later.Would adding the missing appliances be far too expensive to be worthwhile for your time horizon?

In order to truly scale, I needed to broaden my horizons even further.

I take your point to mean that initial purchase price is one of the lesser important variables in real estate investing, and to that I agree if a long horizon is an integral part of your strategy.

But, know that a price of using OPM is a clear-cut time horizon.

I haven't actually played 202 at all@Will- Haha Is it bad that my first thought after "Wow, what a fun way to reinforce investment fundamentals" was "This would be an amazing drinking game"@Rudy- I heard 202 broadens the investment horizon with a lot more stocks and things other than RE.

Offer a different class of shares with shorter time horizons to add liquidity for the investor with the tradeoff being a smaller preferred return for said shares and/or a less favorable back-end splitThere are many other ways to handle this, but each of the items above are used in agreements I have seen or participated in.

If you are older, you should take the lump sum, lets say investing time horizons of less than 10-15yrs. 

My own opinion (and just that an opinion), the original person may have been referring to common perceptions about "age", i.e. that you have a short time horizon, lower risk tolerance etc.  

You, the investor, can double or even triple your money over a 5 - 10 year horizon.