They are two distinctly different things and that's what trips up most lower income housing investors. 

I would make one distinction and that’s between an expense and a capital improvement. 

If you've lived in your town or city for 5 or 10 or 20 years, you will know things about it I can never know and thus you have a distinct advantage over me when it comes to investing - you know what a good price is, what a bad neighborhood is, what house looks good on paper but is underneath the airport flight path, and so on. 

Occasionally you might see commercial real estate companies put out analysis for different markets and different commercial segments. 

@Jonah Gunalda you fit the profile of a large segment of the passive investing community--someone who has a good income from something they are really good at, and would like exposure to real estate in their investment portfolio without distracting them from that very vocation that put them in the position to make such an investment in the first place.There probably isn't a "typical" profile of folks who do not and would not invest in syndications. 

What I did was trying to learn as much as I can regarding the market segment and be able to talk comfortably NOI and cap rates etc.

I get the distinct impression that these folks genuinely think that this rather mundane arbitrage program, coupled with forced savings, and placed into a very high cost insurance product wrapper earns 20% ROI when in actuality they’re looking at about 1/3 of that.

Homes that appeal to our target tenant segment range from $350,000 to $475,000, so the supply of housing we target remains almost the same regardless of how many new homes are built.DemandPopulation growth drives housing demand and price and rent increases.

There are some people coming back because there's a segment of the population who love living in the city and being walking distance to restaurants, stores etc. 

. / San Diego distinction is lost on them.