THING 1: nobody wants to be a landlord except people with enough money to buy an apartment building and in general, those are all REITs at this point.

THING 2: most people can barely scrape together enough money to buy a place to live, let alone a place for others to live. The Warren Adler quote I love - "A man tells the world who he is four ways: his house, his wife, his car and his shoes" - is not favorable towards a d00d who shakes down his neighbors for money rather than blow his entire wad on a more-impressive single family home.

THING 3: In general the people who bought duplexes for income were the strivers with small families who were trying to put down roots. Nobody under 40 wants to put down roots anymore.

THING 4: If you're a REIT, you get better performance out of multi-family than you do out of individual homes. Check INVH vs Blackstone.

THING 5: multi-family is pretty wretched right now because of rates. here's an apartment with a cap rate lower than current commercial mortgage rates. It's the only one listed right now in a 50 mile radius from me.

I'm not saying there's a world full of bargains out there. I'm saying that you aren't competing with as many people as you think. I own an architecturally-significant mansion on two thirds of an acre within the greater metro designed by two Wikipedia architects. I paid a third what it's worth because the pricetag was outside of conforming loan territory, because nobody knew the heritage and because your average flipper didn't see anything but a weird footprint and deferred maintenance. So across five months and twelve open houses, mine was the only offer they got (and it was 20 percent less than their ask).

Now granted. I first started looking at the real estate market in 2006. I've been keeping my powder dry for nearly two decades. And I'm in a world'o'hurt right now; water has been off for two weeks and the renovations seem endless. But objectively speaking I got a photon torpedo into the exhaust vent of the Death Star. It's going to be an incredible house that would be miles out of my budget if I had to buy it finished.

I guess what I'm saying is that maybe you aren't missing something. Maybe everyone else is. MAYBE.