Thoughts on scaling through collateralization (is that a word?) 

@Chris Scales Your best bet is to go down to the city and talk to the planning department.

Scaling up seems to be a challenge unless you work your tail off for years and save $100K for a substantial down payment for a larger multi family.

That's a BIG problem because it's harder to scale and acquire more units because managing one building in an F area is a full time job!

I too drank the return coolaid.. but the returns in these assets class's never materialize at that scale.. 

I would expect that these explanations can vary pretty significantly when described by someone who is just starting out vs. someone who has a few notes under their belt, to someone who has scaled their business; the more responses the better!

If you sell and buy a new place, u'll lose money on closing cost, realtor fees, vacancy during buying/selling etc.i would only sell if you want to move to a different state where cash flow /appreciate is better, or if you want to avoid a potential scenario you see coming that's bad (i.e. housing crash that would hurt a lot in your state) or if you have so much equity in it you think you can scale up, ie. buy several SFH with it and still get +ve cashflow, or buy a quadplex with it.i did a similar analysis earlier on a property i purchased in 2015 for $200k, it's now worth $280k, and i did nothing to it.

When is it time to clean up a rental portfolio? I guess it is time for me. We have been buying cheap rentals since 2002. After self managing all these years, it is time to get rid of all properties that have been dete...

That's how I got started and scaled my portfolio exponentially one year later.

Scaling a business quickly requires taking on enormous risk.