It can be in appreciation, in trading up in assets, etc.With 50k, it really depends.

Unless you can do that I would start paying off my 401k debt and learn to raise private capital. expansion is good, but you are trading a lot of net worth for cash flow. learn to leverage outside capital so you're adding to equities rather than shuffling them.

Also, I have no experience in trades or homebuilding, both of which (in hindsight) would have been nice to work on.Any general or anecdotal advice would be much appreciated.

The problem is that the majority do exactly that, but a great professional real estate agent knows what boxes to check and the tricks of the trade.

If you have U.S. credit, 2 scores must show with at least 2 years of trade line history.

Its a trade off. 

However, for commercial properties in Colorado Springs it is common to see deals trade at a 5% cap rate.

I am a luxury watch dealer by trade, but I've been looking to get into real estate investing.

Larger deals tend to trade in retail at higher cap rates.What you need to decide is how long you want your money tied up into a deal (their exit strategy), and how much you want to place, and if you get cash flow right away, partial, or none until certain metrics are hit.As an example you might get 8% preferred return but upside might be more marginal than a small retail turn around deal where exit is in 2 to 3 years and equity multiple is likely much higher for overall return.

Important to not take one statistic and make conclusions about the entire market.I would have to get to know these areas a lot better to understand the trade offs and dynamics.