This is why you need to do a ton of due diligence on them and make sure they have skin and the game and something to lose.

Probably not much better time to try out the rental game and if it doesn’t work well, or we don’t like it we can still sell and keep the capital gains exemption.

While your coworkers are at Happy Hour or football games, the REI may be knee deep in it.

As you have mentioned in the past, you should not put more than 10-15% of your money in one investment - so if you have $500k and want to throw $50k ok - but it still hurts. if its your first and only 50k, there are plenty of other opportunities out there to get in the game for lessFor many - Goes back to greed and FOMO as well, last few years everyone and their brother wanted to jump in on the STR and MF space because of these great returns - no different than NFT's and bitcoin before that, but when something moves up quickly, it typically drops pretty quickly as well.

Play the long game and focus on rent and home price appreciation.

Alternatively i could go for being a real estate broker and try to get experience in actual real estate without putting too much of my own skin in the game.

Real- Estate  is a lot tougher game now because of technology now allowing buyers, sellers to access the market using the internet without using agents but  you do have hot areas that can support  more bodies .

Blockchain - Ingenious and a game changing technology. 

Playing an appreciation game can be risky.

Hey Ximei,I totally understand wanting to maximize the impact of your initial investment, and if you're open to taking on a bit more complexity, the BRRRR route can be a game changer.