However, I'll put my money on Dallas continuing to outperform the rest of the country.

Certain micro cities within that MSA will either out perform or under perform the city index.

The reality is if you go out of area and buy 30k houses your going to have to pay cash for them.. and then your buying one of the riskier asset class's in the US... especially if its not a smaller little burg type town  as opposed to buying 30k homes in any metro area over 250k population.so if you are going to consider that then there are other avenues RE related that you could do that are  local to you, and at that dollar amount will  More than likely out perform a risky low end asset.. and that would be investing with a top HML in your market  they will get you 9 to 12%  that you can basically count on .. .Nothing is a for sure thing but FAR less risky than 30k homes in the hoods...

BUT in this area stick built will outperform when I go to sell by a very large margin.I would recommend private land.

When gets to the point that my side job is out performing my rat race job then that will be when I leave my rat race job.  

Technically you could have a smaller water heater out perform a larger one if there was enough difference in them in BTUs and the 1st hour recovery numbers.Many manufacturers offer good, better and best models with the best rated ones being fast recovery tanks, which means they out perform similar gallon sized models. 

Our stocks have way outperformed our rentals in the last few years, but we are more confident in having both.  

Etc.Some REI's will never outperform the stock market, because they don't understand &/or don't adhere to the basic premises of real estate investing. 

The more expensive inner city areas had vastly outperformed the cheaper outer suburban areas.  

If you're willing to bust your butt, you can get close enough to the pro-forma estimates that you'll likely outperform better properties.