You have to enjoy and reward yourself sometimes.

Some of my clients love the cash flow in the east side neighborhoods over by Slavic Village and Broadway selling between 90-110k with rents up to $1,800+, but just really depends on the types of neighborhoods you're investing in and your risk / reward threshold. 

It will have ups and downs, you will make mistakes, but I have found real estate investing to be a rewarding endeavor. 

However as you correctly point out this is far more risky and or its risk capital compared to buying a income property.. but the reward can be strati-spherically higher .. not just a little bit but it can be life changing profits on some of these deals.

As far as office I remain intrigued by it, also at least in our area condos have been brutally hit and I think offer a “deal” without quite the downsides to office, I tend to think office/retail in suburban and even pandemic boom markets (I’ve started investing on the eastern shore of Md and have considered some office deals there) offers the best risk/reward of office because you have a population boom coupled with ultimately still a low supply of office space, where as urban areas have lost population and have a huge glut of supply, I think the ultimate fate of a lot of urban office trends towards zero/land value. 

The Phoenix market, for instance, has been seeing shifts that reward creativity and timing.

I'd build a quad, and there is a laundry list of ways one can select to be amply rewarded for such. 

I do not have my numbers as well organized as @Greg Scott but my estimate is upper 20% annual return on average.The 3 i am currently invested in, one seems likely to produce an outstanding return (High risk, high reward), one is conservative and is performing to projections, and one i have significant concerns about but has not had a capital call.  

Systematize as much as possible to create scalability.PM is a challenging but rewarding business.

It is very complicated; like a snowflake, each transaction is different.How do you decide risk vs. reward here?