I know an older friend whose parents bought scores of houses all along the socal area in the 40's and 50's. His dad was handy and did a lot of the patchup work. Recall in those days many of the suburbs of socal were still fields and dirt patches, long before the state of CA swelled up in population and immigrants. In 2002 before the housing burst they might have been worth hundreds of millions. Unfortunately his dad sold the houses in the early 60's and invested all of the profits into some hospital which went bust. All his massive hardworked fortune was gone and he had to come out of retirement to go back to work for the military in unhealthy working conditions and he died heartbroken never receiving social security and medicare.
Reading some newsletters about real estate, I would side with the view that real estate will be dead for the next 10 years if not 20. If one could invest and buy real estate in 2020, then it will probably take 40 or 50 years, not 25 years to make those millions. Assuming the U.S. hasn't economically collapsed by then. The theory is today's young generations can't afford to buy houses, of which the majority will be poor and income challenged most of their working lives, degree or no, but their kids and grandkids will benefit hopefully from the cyclical change back to true prosperity circa 2070.