Real estate - a long-term/retirement tool only?

[Olga Huxoll]

Hello,

I've been laid off, so I don't have any income coming in right now. So at this time, I am interested in both - creating income now and investing long-term. I was thinking about going into real estate investing, but then something occurred to me...all the stories I hear are about a long-term gain. Even if I buy a couple of rental properties now, the rental income will not cover all my expenses.

Am I missing something or are all RE investors working daytime jobs and doing this on the side until they have enough income coming in from RE? Anybody has a story where they or someone they know did this full time from the start, without a daytime job?

Thanks.

[Jean Bolger]

It's not easy to make money quickly in real estate. You're better off planning for the long term. That said, the sooner you start the sooner you'll get results.
It's true that you have almost no chance of getting a bank loan without a current source of income, so unless you have enough money sitting around to do some cash deals you'll need to come up a different approach. 
There's tons of information on BP about wholesaling and flipping, which are activities you might be able to start with. Both of those require a certain mindset and persistence but there are  examples within the BP community of people who have thrown themselves into one of those and achieved success pretty quickly