As mentioned above the ADU play is very big right now as the city has done some big things as far as ADU allowance and ease when it comes to the permitting and planning piece of that but you are pretty spot on, this is why unless a crazy deal comes my way (off market will be the only way to make that happen) I am sticking to flipping locally and rolling those profits into buy and hold properties out of state.

The reason why they want to give it for free... and I am not there so I am not sure... is because of the same thing most people say when we give an offer lower than they want to hear "The land alone is worth more than that".Yeah you Oompaloompa,  sure, but tearing and demoing the house costs 30K BEFORE I will have a piece of land I can do anything constructive with.There are a lot of issues other than just  a free house...But, hey, maybe they really are just done with it.

was thinking of getting one and putting it on a small piece of land and renting it.

A lot  more than just the syndication piece.

If you're sending out mail, it should be hundreds or thousands of pieces. 

Assuming 25% down, that's a couple homes valued at $120k a piece that one could invest in.

I have seen developments around me that will buy up the large (100+ acres) of land to develop and instead of buying up the smaller pieces nearby, they simply build around them. 

I'm sending out 1,000 pieces per week for... well... ever! 

I suppose if you owned a property in an area with poor/no property management facilitators, and you wanted to turn your property into STR, there might be some value in letting someone else do it who can make more money than you can, but generally the pieces don't really fit together all that well.

We genuinely like each piece and have reasons to keep each in house.