On a personal level, I believe in building green, sustainable homes.

An intermediary with integrity will demand an accounting and paper trail that will sustain an audit.  

If beach resonants and will add some additional satisfaction and quality of life stuff then do it.

I guess it can happen but as real estate goes I think this is by far the hardest thing to put together sustain and be profitable at.. other than a side hustle make some money occasionally if you darn lucky type thing.. folks I know that do this successfully spend probably 100 to 200k Minimum a year in mailers ALONE  and they have teams that door knock that get paid and Very robust back end systems.. etc etc.. this is a capital intensive business to do right.. 

I actually want to live out of country (low cost of living) for couple of years therefore i want fewer properties with paid off mortage to sustain my lifestyle.

We've had very little vacancy or collection loss so that's probably about as good as you can do in the lower end areas and might even be a little better than can be sustained long term.

Obviously there are always exceptions to the "rules," but the pieces you mentioned about drilling down a large asset list and having a clear process/consistent buying criteria definitely resonate with me.  

The Phoenix market has also had really healthy, sustainable appreciation for several years now (with good indicators that will continue). 

We both want to build a sustainable business and know it takes time and education to make it happen. 

I believe you are right about the continued growth but I just don't see how it is sustainable looking at wages.