(Of course I have to acquire, rehab and manage 2 more houses.)Below are side-by-side before and after photos illustrating why this buy and hold turned into a flip...

The overwhelming majority of posts appear to illustrate that investors are making the right moves all the time: every property is flipped for profit, rented with good tenants, or refinanced with a pocket full of cash at closing.

Let’s say average rent in Boston is $3,000 and it’s $1,000 in Tampa... your 6% in Boston is $180 and it’s $100 in Tampa.Same amount of work for $80 lessHopefully that helps illustrate that it isn’t apples to apples to compare based on percentages only.By the way we are seeing 8+caps here routinely.

@Joel Owens & @Christopher Telles This listing near me illustrates just what you're talking about.

When I was stating what the property costs me every month, I was including extra to account for repairs.Also, Its not likely to be vacant any time soon as illustrated by the volume of calls I recieved wanting to rent the place with out even seeing it within a half of a day.

Buy at $169k, rehab for $60/sq ft x 850 sq ft (estimated home size based on 2 beds 1 baths, simply for illustrative purposes) = $51,000 rebah costs

No, it's not true, and just illustrates why I despise 90% of real estate agents.

What are you looking for in a newbie to illustrate that they are not a time waster if you’re a seller?

To illustrate this last point- Say they built the property for $300K using their own cash and then took out a loan for $400K. 

@Adam Moehn illustrated the reason the tax write off idea is not a good reason to cashout refi.