We had all the RIGHT puzzle pieces sitting in our laps (great realtor, carpenters, and mortgage broker as close friends and family) so we just had to simply put them together (with a lot of hard work and having a family of 4 living in one room at a time for a couple years.)We are now moving to Roslyn, WA and hope to start a similar (although not as extensive) project there and also try to acquire some SFHs in Kittitas County to start our REI education/climb to billions. :) This feels like bragging, but it was a lot of market luck, hard work, amazing friends, and a wife with an eye for staging.

Especially the days when you discover that big capex like a roof being blow off (happened 2 years ago), some tweakers climbed up on the roof and gutted the A/C (did two of those in the last 12 months), an evap cooler leaked for so long that the drywall on the ceiling of the kids bedroom caved in (last year), the hot water heater blew a hose and a major leak went unnoticed for 10 hours flooding the hall, kitchen and living room (dealing with that now), the tenant smelled gas outside, the gas company came and shut off the gas because the underground pipe is corroded AND also discovered that the water heater is not venting properly so it got red tagged (just dealt with that last month) or the time the tenant "invited" a homeless guy over, he moved in, then called his other homeless buddy up and he parked his crappy RV with his entire family living in it in the driveway.

And, even if rents climb only slowly, my cash flow position should improve over time, no?

We are at the point where we both got our careers and are making the long climb up the corporate ladders.

So my once perfect credit is trash and I'm still trying to climb out of that hole. 

I am not saying that you can't make money here in the city and surrounded areas but rather that you are climbing a hill and have lot's of competition and even then you're money doesn't get a 1/3 of what you can get in other areas.

We soon found out that number would be climbing over 30k.

Unlike a company that decides to cut their dividend, my rent yield continues to climb.

We kept our noses to the grind stone and slowly started to climb out of the hole.

The market was climbing and hot at the time, and I had to make a decision to keep or sell.