Or are they expecting big rise in interest? 

Considering Humbolt Park as a rising neighborhood. 

I felt buying hoping that the equity would rise would be a gamble without doing anything to the property.

While the tax savings from the Save Our Homes Amendment has no doubt helped many homeowners to stay in their homes even when values were rising, it also tended to discourage homeowners from moving to a new residence, for fear of giving up all of their accumulated property tax savings.

We have a horrible traffic problem downtown that they cannot solve and they keep on building high rises.

If trends continue prices will rise through other areas .

Another popular one is Zoho and one that I hear is a very simple CRM is High Rise.  

The effect on housing market is that prices will continue to rise, especially where demand is high but supply is low, which is the city core that is more friendly for commuting.My suggestion would be to start BRRRR in the C- neighborhoods that are within the interstate loop. 

But it opens the door for landlords to increase rents and toughen requirements (we are now required to tell each applicant our "minimum" rental requirements) which of course means that property prices are going to be on the rise.  

With this math, we would need 35 properties, but prices are rising so the deals are harder to find.