For question one, as others have stated a lot of Americans simply cannot afford to buy a home for a multitude of reasons.More importantly, to answer "why would people choose to rent your single family or multifamily instead of traditional rental buildings- there's a few reasons for that and let me further explain.Alot of "new apartment buildings"/ complexes or "traditional ones" have been popping up all over the last few years.

Nice to meet myself all the time.Grats on being as new as I am then.I am from Fresno and I do plan on investing in a multitude of states.

By "go big" I mean a 10-20 unit, maybe bigger, rental property.The logical part of my brain says this is a good idea, but it is definitely a nerve wracking way to start investing given the multitude of ways this could go horribly wrong.What are your thoughts?

Also, offloading the unit will be easy coz one or two duplexes came on the market in the past few months and they all had a multitude of offers and were gone in weeks.How do all these owners handle property in "war zones" / D areas?

Third, estimates for labor, time and materials are always best guesses, which can change for a multitude of reasons.

@Brice Hall Based on your initial post and the multitude of comments on this thread, I have come to the following conclusions:YOU cannot make money on 30K houses.

I know there are a multitude of variables to consider in each situation.

I work as a security officer in a multitude of areas, currently working security for Google 's Zeitgeist event.

The 2015 Integra Realty Resources (IRR) Viewpoint report will provide you with market-specific CR's for a multitude of commercial property types, further divided into Class A and Class B.  

So years down the road when your buyer is ready to pay you off, you will have a pretty wide spread between what you owe and what you are owed.Bottom line, there are a multitude of ways to make a dud into a deal.Hope this helps