I think your best approach is to pretend you are the investor yourself, calculate build cost (mortgage with interest) + Maint / cap expenses/ management fees according to your zoning and then compare that to the average rent in that neighborhood.

If you are comparing the two, you may get more appreciation, but more issues in Long Beach versus something steadier in Riverside.

I am comparing both of them right now and while people seem to prefer Propstream, I am surprised to see how many comps do not come up in the search, while Batchleads and even Zillow give me more results (using the exact same filters).

However as you correctly point out this is far more risky and or its risk capital compared to buying a income property.. but the reward can be strati-spherically higher .. not just a little bit but it can be life changing profits on some of these deals.

Days on market is about 2 months, slightly better than earlier this year but relatively speaking, it's still a more balanced market compared to rest of the Bay Area.

I’ve been concentrating more on the Indy market and I’m happy to compare notes if you’d like.

There are many variables that increase real estate returns and they are rarely addressed when comparing it to the stock market.

If you've lived in your town or city for 5 or 10 or 20 years, you will know things about it I can never know and thus you have a distinct advantage over me when it comes to investing - you know what a good price is, what a bad neighborhood is, what house looks good on paper but is underneath the airport flight path, and so on. 

Use tools like Zillow, Rentometer, and local real estate listings to compare prices and rents.

“Note investors who think learning from people who scam others out of millions is a good idea and a way to have a good reputation in the space.”I think we have to divide the above into two distinct groups.