It's a thrilling and rewarding world, but it can also be overwhelming for newcomers.

I was lucky and I survived and flourished but there were lots of times during where I thought I was screwed.While the reward was pretty great, the risk was huge, and I would definitely not do it again unless for some reason I really, really needed the money. 

This type of real estate comes with high risk and high reward.

Figure a few grand to paint rooms, replace carpet in a room, deep clean and spruce the property, replace a fixture or two, etc.If you have to replace your resident annually the $9600 total income will get a gut punch.The true value of the higher-end neighborhoods is residents know if they move out of the home they have it's a challenge to find another, especially if they have been there a few years and have a competitively rewarding rent rate.All this really is is basic economics...sell ten custom widgets for $1000 or 100 standard widgets for $100 each.

But helping someone else do so is still very rewarding. 

Risk Reward-  as I stated earlier the S&P 500 P/E ratio is almost twice as high as real estate at a 7 cap.  

It's a thrilling and rewarding world, but it can also be overwhelming for newcomers.

The reward must be greater than the risk.

You can always experiment with what you may be comfortable with to see what works best.Like @Shawn Parsh said, if you have other people looking for the type of property you want to invest in, reward them for their effort.

Balancing a full-time job, especially one as demanding as a cloud solutions architect, with your new investment can be challenging, but very rewarding.