I view investing for appreciation (with negative monthly cash flow) as gambling.

Its a gamble in my opinion.

I'm out of state so it was kind of a gamble for me to hire them, but they've been great. 

I've become obsessed with the idea of using real estate to achieve financial freedom and to fuel my adventure travel lifestyle. 

paying recapture is the most NON talked about event on BP or in real estate.. and why when folks talk about buying for only cash flow and appreciation IE speculation or gambling those folks totally miss the point and do not have a full picture of the Lifecyle of a real estate investment.. if you have NO appreciation your recapture tax is going to eat into your IRR in a negative manner.and for a lot of folks to 1031 one little house with 20k coming out of it is hard to do.. since the house never went up.. the other thing is people that say they are buy and hold forever.. this rarely happens.. life happens life changes.. and so 7 to 10 years down the track MOST folks unless they have decided to make it their lifes work IE be a full time professional landlord.. they sell .and then that pesky recapture they never knew about or thought about bites them .. :) 

Sounds like you're diving into this real estate investing adventure head first!

There are those who would say that investing for appreciation is either speculating or gambling, not investing.

I look forward to following your adventure. 

Garrett Blanchard Garrett: Consider investing in a $500 market study before seriously embarking on this adventure.

A blue chip dividend growth stock say Proctor and Gamble will have a lower PE ratio, say 15, that might be the equivalent of slow steady appreciation, but no real price appreciation.