On paper returns, look excellent but when you put it into practice, you don't seem to get the same kinds of returns. 

Stand on who you are, and this direction is excellent. 

If you’re referring to the “newbies” with $10k to their name that watch a video by Pace and get excited and pay for joining, go out with their last $5k and do a sub to with a “desperate” homeowner without revealing all the possible consequences (because they are unaware of the consequences through lack of experience and lack of knowledge and or choose not to inform the seller) then I agree, it’s probably going to turn out badly for all concerned.If on the other hand you’re referring to a seasoned investor with excellent credit, significant cash reserves, who wants to add a property to their portfolio without going through loan qualifying, and can pay enough to give the seller “walking away” money because of the low existing interest rates and or, and is dealing with a informed seller, then I find nothing wrong or negative about the transaction.  

You'll definitely get the long term appreciation in the San Diego market since our supply levels remain low which helps to insulate our market here, but it will be hard to cash flow on immediately unless you use one of the above strategies I mentioned. 

Achieving excellence in anything generally requires an extreme amount of dedication and time commitment, time that could have been spent doing a thousand other things.

Our goal is to be perfect and since that is almost impossible, the next best is excellence.  

You may be excellent at what you do and beat the national average in every category of your expertise. 

Your advice about understanding the underlying accounting and how the numbers are generated is an excellent point—I can see how that would help me identify any gaps or inaccuracies in the financials.I also really appreciate the insight on how T-12s differ based on the number of units.

Ben Russell has done an excellent job of covering differences in the lease.

But she takes excellent care of them (even put in a small concrete pool for them to play in during the summer:-).