We moved from single family homes to apartment complexes and grew ten-fold in that time. 

I have bought a number of properties this way and had huge returns on my investment - 8 to 10 fold and more.

My "aha" moment was two fold:1.

My main point was 2-fold; 1.

You will make this money in ten folds.

@Markeen Baker - I think that it's a two fold here. 

There's been times in the past where I had so much cash in my pocket that I couldn't fold it and I might as well have a bullseye on me.Now I don't have to hear that they mailed it last week, the check has insufficient funds, or any of the other nonsense that comes out of the tenant playbook.

That is:$60,000 in non-refundable option consideration fees - your $30,000 = $30,000 profit$10,000 monthly rent - your 50% expense - your $1,900 debt service = $3,100 per month profit x12 = $31,000 per year profit$570,000 in real estate owed + $657,000 owed to you = $87,000 in equityALL AT AN INFINITE RETURN because the original $30k you used to secure the properties was payed back to you 2-fold due to the $60K you got in non-refundable option consideration fees.That is $30K + $31K + $87K = $148,000 profit off of an initial $30,000 investment for a return of 493%.Now we can break this down into yearly return on non-sales years and sales years but I will try to keep this as short as possible so lets just lump them together and pretend that you only count one year of rent spreads for the calculation.Now, because I am an engineer by training and plan for the worst case, I did not include any of the "frosting" which would be the depreciation tax benefits, the appreciation, the increases in rents over time, and the fact that a lot of the tenant-buyers will not execute the option, in which you would keep the rents and the non-refundable option consideration fee and do it all over again collecting a new non-refundable option consideration fee.With this model and only owning 10 properties with a total of $30,000 out of your pocket over the next ten years and taking the "frosting" into account, it is very easy to hit 800%+ return or higher.Not to shabby huh?

If you plan to sell after 2-3 years, then you probably want to run your numbers like a flipper would ... in other words, if you can't fix it up and resale right after the remodel, with all of the purchase price, transaction costs, holding costs, and rehab costs folded in, then you probably don't want to buy it thinking that you will make a profit holding it for 2-3 years. 

They also recently acquired another property management company they are in the process of folding into Blue Sky so they must be doing something right. :)  These people will work with you as an investor.