I purchased a primary residence that will become a rental in 3-5 years.It doesn't cash flow as is (if I rented it today), but the area has high appreciation.I wanted to start with a great numbers to start, but being military and needing to find my family a good home, I took a gamble.

I imagine people or doing it anyways and just gambling on not getting caught.. what are your thoughts?

On the other hand, they can also meet like-minded individuals who are their co-investors and ignite the essence of comradeship in the ranch. 

Some of you 'tards on here probably don't know how to ignite a pilot light. 

While I don't have any investment real estate yet, I can say that if you are a gambling person you can work without the safety net of a LLC or S corp.I have started llc's for both investment and management upon the advice of attorneys in Wisconsin.

If you like to gamble you can go down into these SW areas and sit at the big tables, but I don't bring my investors down there because it's too high risk.

Face it, what you are describing is gambling.

The last place I would go if I was tight on cash would be Las Vegas, even though I realize there are other things aside from gambling to do there. 

BP tends to be a little anti appreciation and its definitely a bigger gamble but its where a lot of people made a lot of money esp. when they bought to live because they bought in better areas that went up. 5) In this case if you are buying a larger multi unit the big gains come from making improvements to the rent, the cost structure, etc.

This is admittedly a gamble as the wrong tenant could end up costing you, but for this particular investor, it worked out in every case.