While there will be a fair share of start up failures, many of these areas are just taking off and there is plenty of growth expected if you are going to look at 20-30 yr horizon.

However, if an absentee owner calls and states they want 200K for a property and the agent sells it for 500K and nets 300K they should be BUSTED big time for failure to give estimate of FMV first.

@Dallas Trufyn  I'm not sure these add any value as both the fire pit and grill are fully portable and I'm not sure if anyone would assume they stay with the property upon the tenants vacating.The looming issues here are the failure of these tenants to abide by the lease terms, and the exposure to liability they have just generated for the owners.  

That generates fear because you keep hearing about all these failures and still have no clear path.  

One of them was by Theodore Roosevelt(sp) :"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat"

Start a new vs experiencing a maintenance issue like a sewer line failure costing you thousands of dollars.

There is a very high failure rate in real estate even amongst people with experience.

In my opinion, basing success or failures on others and situations will never get you where you want to be.

I don’t know many that took a shortcut—but I could tell you numerous failure stories about those that tried.

Most people that crash and burn get bad assets and might combine that with cheap pm and or contractors or ones that will quit due to unreasonable expectations which is a recipe for failure.