I am thankful that Bigger Pockets hammers the point about the calculations and that some of the guests on the podcasts talk about the difference between investing and speculation.

So far, that bet has been rewarded, especially on the land speculation side.

This probably should be obvious with any sales person - but keep it in mind.One final minor issue - they are slow to pay out rents - often at the very end or after the end of the month.Property #1)The first property I bought was suppose to be a 4 bedroom and 2 bath but the basement ended up "costing too much" so they weren't able to do it for our contracted sales price - the rent was able to be raised to make the speculated return line up without the extra bedrooms.

This area was a large speculation back in the day and never really made it.

Now, take a huge cut out of that since you're halfway down the page (I can only speculate), and whoever gets that far, will click on your site.

Of course I will not debate with people who say there's no cash-flow in the Bay Area and appreciation is speculation.

Call it "speculating" or speculative investing, call it an up market, you guys can call it whatever you'd like.

The only negatives I can think of are missing the greater future price appreciation in SF (although that's speculative I believe it's accurate) and the possibility of trading one rent controlled unit for two rent controlled units.

South Baltimore may be a good speculative option due to endevelopment at Port Covington, but that's a long and expensive gamble. 

But I will speculate a bit.If you sell an asset whether it's real property or a corporation you pay capital gains on the difference of sales price + costs - purchase price plus cost - accumulated depreciation.