It is not totally without risk as a good rental are can dry up leaving you with excessive vacancies but overall the strategy is fairly conservative.Sean takes a more aggressive approach.

We settled with a 80% first bank mortgage and I got back at settlement the 80% balance of my earnest money despot excess to the purchase price. 

UCD (university city district) is home to UPenn, CHop, Drexel U, and Penn Medicine. 2/2 apts rent for 14-1800 a month, 4/2's are in excess of 22-2400 a month (courtesy of www.rentometer.com) ARV's of dupes and tri's in the neighborhood will go from the 400's up to the mid 500's.

The purpose is to hold excessive rain water on the property, rather than overwhelm streets and storm drains.

If the system overproduces the excess goes to the grid and comes back to me as a credit from the local utility.

Once the property comes into the city  Next 5 to 10 years.. it gets upzoned to resi and commercial.. value shoots from 50k an acre to over 650k an acre or 76,000,000  .. now of course depending on when this happens will dictate the return but we might have only 2 mil  in cash in it over  10 year period.. small group of mid 30s successful business guys here In Oregon who each took it in their roth.. so less than 10k a year so maybe invest 100k or so over the 10 year and get well in excess of 2 to 3 mil tax free.. 

California charges a minimum tax of $800 a year per LLC, and more if you have gross receipts in excess of $250k.

In 24 months, there will likely be only a few properties that can be had without bringing at least 100k to the table to cover the gap, and much past that, no one will even be talking about VA assumptions anymore.I would suggest that if you have some excess cash available or have found a lender willing to go into a second position, NOW is the time to grab these deals.

It looks like excess grout was spilled onto the concrete and could be why there is a different texture here. 

One for each house sounds excessive.