Areas where they are building awesome mid-rise multifamily all over, and yet have NOTHING. these are the urban areas im targeting for ground up or warehouse conversion projects.I have a self storage specialized architect I work with, and we are looking at self storage with apartments or hotel wrapping it, since the huge costs of Urban SS is you have to make it look like a HIP office building pretty much to get government approval.Shared elevators etc, with separate doors to go to Storage and Units, even a perk for Apartment Units to have storage that close.The good thing about SS is that its mostly mom-n-pop owners, they own 1 or 2. they self manage, and usually not well.Bring in Extra Space or Cubesmart as a 3rd party manager, and usually you can boost rental revenue up like 15% very quickly.

When I purchased my primary residence I had the same mentality as my co worker.

So while my snowball that I'm building gets a little bigger owning 50% of a property vs sitting on the sidelines, if I save up to do it on my own, that snowball gets a much bigger boost.

I am an out-of-state investor looking for the best of both worlds: high cash-flow properties that also have the potential for capital growth.Does anyone know of new universities under construction, or other infrastructure projects that are likely to boost values in a high-cash-flow area?

One of the mental shifts has been investing in "down markets".  

If your projects have high leverage (which I recommend), you can boost your profit by 25%+ each time ... if you do 12 deals a year (which many of our customers do) ... that is hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit ... enough to hire an assistant for $40K a year to do all the leg work.Regarding @Jim Carson's comment.

Thankfully a second floor window had been left unlocked, so my husband boosted me up and I crawled through and we changed the lock. 

In my opinion that is the first step you should take in any adverse possession play.I have found that very often the owner has indeed intentionally abandoned the property - usually due to other debts on the property or personal issues ranging from disease, to imprisonment to a change in the owner's mental or spiritual state. 

We mismanaged and this house took up so much of our mental power and physical power...the drain this property took from our focus and our team was the greatest loss.Bottom LineHouse took us 12 months to purchase, rehab and sell.  

I'm ambitious with a great student mentality and looking to expand my knowledge base and network but am falling short.