Just buying assets at .50 cents on the dollar or better... stay deleveraged..Why would you leveage personally... that defeats the purpose of what you are trying to accomplish..Ie... alot of books and people teach when starting out... to pull cash out of their personal residence...That's gambling yoru sole goal is to get personally free of debt or at a very debt to income... 30% or less or so...So, you build a business that uses leverage to create or find equity and duplicates... and then get equity out...Imagine you were back in times... and you found out you could mine for gold...You go out and find gold... and then put it on the shelf hoping one day it would be worth more... well of course it will....but, the moment you found it... is the moment of highest return...

It's such a gamble.

Investing in general is gambling. 

It’s a fantastic way of immersing yourself in that way of thinking and keeping it at the forefront of your mind, even if the noise from work is very loud.

Do you think I'm gambling by bidding on the property if the risk is no comps and the value of the property coming back too low.

Or as @Chris Grenzig mentioned, you could gamble by hiring someone off Craigslist. 

Gambled a bit on the color with it being a bit of an artsy area.

Otherwise it is like Gambling If You invest in real estate and buy REIT, it is disadvantage to you return because you are double exposed to the same risk in the same industry.  

You can start with less, but the lower you go the more you're gambling with your investment.

But I'm planning to diversify the portfolio towards $flow+ in the near future, since appreciation is just another type of gamble (calculated risk, but still).