I love that infomercial on Saturday mornings with the jello babes (they constantly jiggle) that make wild proclamations that this guy makes 'UP TO' $5,000 a month, then the next guy makes 'UP TO' $10,000 a week and the next guy makes 'UP TO' $100,000 a day!

The cycle of this and length of time varies by local market on a micro scale and then also by national factors on a macro scale.When the markets recovers these high appreciation markets attract speculators that drive prices up.When they also leave the market it drives prices way down.So California,New York etc. you have wild swings in value whereas say in Georgia we slipped in value as well but prices were not as extreme.Investors like cash flow because it is an immediate quantifiable income.Appreciation is a crystal ball speculative investment that you hope grows faster than inflation every year.I will say there is only so much land to build on for high density areas.So if you make a bunch of money at your job and have reserves than it could be a great long term appreciation play plus rents could rise at a fast clip.You have to remember every investor has a different plan.The investors who are my clients think differently based on a different set of goals and how they want to allocate time.

Some people start as teenagers and are wildly successful while others start at 70 and fail miserably, and the same could be said for the opposite.

Snow removal is obviously a wild card, you could have very little cost or if you get a decent storm every week you can end up spending more than that total just on that as well.

But there can be wild fluctuations from between places that are similar on paper. 

If that's not something you're interested in then you could also get into banking/mortgage brokering but that's like the wild west. 

As a CA landlord, (NorthernCalif. rural) I don't think of CA as "renter friendly", (and yes, I'm currently in the middle of an"eviction /unlawful detainer" process ) compared to much of the east coast; that is- unless you're in a CA "rent controlled" area, where the laws are VERY STRICT, and can vary wildly in each area, even inside city/county lines.  

The apartment is in a hip/historical area and prices have gone wild over the past few years, especially if the unit is knocked out- like on the level we renovate our flips to.

HOWEVER when I was 30 years old wild horses couldn't keep me from trying it.

You may be thinking purely of the property-finding aspect, but there's a lot more to consider.First off, as an unrepresented buyer, the only sellers who will take you seriously are usually going to be FSBO's, who may not know any better, or scumbags who know they can take wild advantage of you - any listing agent worth their salt is going to see an unrepresented buyer as a tremendous liability and amount of work for themselves and their seller.