Properties are not like stocks where After IPO the market cap is so large that that most of the life changing appreciation is gone. 

The presumption of most reading this is you mean stocks and bonds and other assets you would buy from brokerage houses.

Still an interesting model and would provide good 5+ year profit potential, but for now I put my money in a Fundrise portfolio for hopefully for immediate returns until I am in a better spot to make a longer term investment. 

A lot of our housing stock here has finished basements or in-law suites, so with something like that you can generate significant rental income for an inexpensive conversion. 

BRRRR deals can be trickier to come by in these spots due to their higher demand, but the way to go is to build a solid team with local connections who can share insights and bring you deals!

@Jennifer GillThe only way to not get any calls about properties is to just sell them all and invest in stocks.

I am now at a point in life where I realized retirement isn’t far off and I need to find something outside of stock markets and 401k’s to invest in.

That's why many businesses just close instead of being sold.Real estate investing provides a lot more creative angles than the stock market, but on a conceptual level, nobody would seriously attempt to replace their W2 income in a few years by investing a few thousand dollars in the stock market.

Land is also scarce, so a SFH in such a dense and popular spot will be rare and expensive.Also as David mentioned, land retains its value but structures are generally thought to depreciate to zero over 25 years.

If this is not something you're interested in delving into and learning to a high degree, then investing in publicly traded REITs would be another good option for you, which have historically returned about 13.5 per cent Per year over the past 50 years (1977-present), beating the US stock market by two per cent and even beating private real estate investing by 4 per cent (that's compared with the average real estate investor, not the experts here at Bigger Pockets).