Generally, a person can go to a school to gain the knowledge, skills and abilities to be successful and ethical in their chosen industry.

I am not a gambling man.

Choose an area that you believe would have a lot of your #1 choice and become the expert in that area for the chosen #1. 4.

@Tim EhlersI live in the NW, and while prices are better than LA area, I still found the barriers high enough that I have chosen to invest entirely out of state. 1.

You are not still getting a 10% ROI because your principle payment is your cash that you have chosen to invest in that property (forced by bank or not) you could refi that cash out to invest elsewhere are you could sell and invest the cash in something else.For buy and hold RE you should use return on equity (ROE), that is value of the property minus the amount owed. 

When i started i took a gamble on Williamsburg before it hit,it worked!

That is literally just gambling......I'd be very hesitant to want to have my money tied up in something that is so unregulated and that has so little control. 

I'm no good with a hammer, not interested in flipping which seems too much like gambling at this point in my life.

If we ran it for a year and worst-case a renter who's unhappy with us attempting to raise/normalize rents reports the leaking roof, we could be stuck with MAJOR repairs that we can't yet afford, or who knows, a condemned building because there's mold in that roof/attic/walls that have been leaking.It's discouraging - we could walk away and take our $25k and go 20% down on a duplex that cash flows $300 a month, or we gamble on this place where the cash flow is approaching $1.5k per month after budgeting conservatively with the bigger pockets calculators. 

They make the big bucks because they have perfected their game and they continue to work in their chosen field.Do not assume that always doing something new is anyway connected to doing well.