With a realtor or investment group that understands the Buy and Hold and it's  principles, an investor can buy many more properties, have less risk, and end up with a far greater return if they hold properties for the long term, as opposed to fixing properties up and waiting to sell them.

Fix and Flipping is a common strategy because it is simple, and can be understood by the new investor or even non-investor.  It's simply buying a property that is distressed, fixing it up, and selling it for more then what it was purchased for combined with the fix-up cost.  Though it does have a place in investing and certainly there are many investors that have done well using this approach, the Fix and Flip has many potential down falls relative to the Buy and Hold. 

The primary issues are that the investor has to spend a significant amount of time and money fixing the property up, it is not nearly as lucrative, and there is more risk. It takes the experience needed to deal with contractors in an efficient manner and project management skill- something most investors don't have, or care to have.  They must buy the property below value, make certain they do their calculations correctly on what it will take to fix up the property, make sure that work is done quickly, then sit and wait until the property sells.  If all of this is done to perfection, they then take their profit, give half to taxation... and start over.

With the Buy and Hold, someone can purchase a property, do much less in the form of fix-up, and rent the property much easier then the work and risk associated with a Fix and Flip.  With the Buy and Hold, there is the risk of the property not renting, but that risk is more tolerable then thousands that can be lost in waiting for a property to sell at a price needed to make the job profitable.  An investor today can go out and buy 5 properties in the next 30 days, pull out tens of thousands of dollars in lines of credit on those properties (assuming they were bought below value), have a good opportunity to rent them, and need very little experience compared to a Fix and Flip scenario.  They then hand the property over to a property manager who will charge 5-10% of the rent, but the investor can write that cost off, so the benefit of not having to deal with renters far outweighs the minimal cost associated with a good property manager.

The biggest advantage by far with holding properties, as opposed to selling, is the compounding wealth and appreciation.  By continuing to hold, and not starting over each time by selling a fixed up property, an investor is compounding their assets because they'll eventually have millions of dollars in assets going up at hopefully that national average appreciation
of  6-7%.

Please Also See: Why Investors Use The Option ARM