Renting and eating the loss is a gamble on future rent increases, but the market and high costs might not make it worth the stress.

Doing Build-4-Rent without all this, is GAMBLING not investing.

Predicting appreciation seems like a big gamble to me.

In the UK for example we have a simple LTR model, which works well and is very hands off.

CitaDAO focuses on commercial real estate, and their first building coming on-chain is a $20m property located at 56 Queen St, Cardiff, UK - a prime downtown area.On the other hand, RealT currently focuses on mostly residential in the US, with property values ranging from 50k to over $500k per property.

A gamble on gambles of volatility moving certain ways in certain time windows..... 

People mentioning that they put their life savings in something in hopes of a better future is gambling.

Meeting strangers at a vacant property is always a gamble also.  

I don't know exactly how the funds in the UK work that you described.

I can find a lot of options in the UK and elsewhere, but not really in the US that's not like "break the bank" expensive.