Short answer: prices kept going up.

I’d buy a property and one year later it would provide the cash (via refi) to buy the next property – it seemed like a no-brainer at the time.

Cashflow grew more negative with each refi and subsequent purchase but I had income from my job to cover most of it and the refi’s covered the rest.

Rents were also rising so I could pretend that what I was doing made sense.

It finally dawned on me that I was not ‘investing’ in real estate – what I was doing was speculating on higher prices and rising rents.