Wanting to get into Real Estate Investments, but looking for advice

[Tom Wilson]

I'm wanting to get into Real Estate investments, but not even sure where to begin.

I'm a small business owner that makes low 6 figure income. I have a home in So Cal I bought 2 years and am aggressively paying down a $210K mortgage (should have it paid off in a 7 more years). I'm wanting to get into Real Estate since the housing market in my area is in the toilet (you can get properties on the penny right now). Home values have decreased as much as 50% to 70% in my area since 2007. I'm in my 30's and my long term goal is buy homes over the next 20 to 30 years, turn them into rentals and hopefully have enough homes that can position me to be a good place financially when I retire (I also invest in Roth IRA's, so I diversify a bit).

I'm totally new to all of this and I'm wanting to find a community of others that have done this (or trying to do this) to get your insight. Curious if there's any place you'd direct me to get started, like a good book to educate me to begin this process.

I'm very conservative financially and I've watched so many people here in So Cal get caught up in speculation with the housing market, so I tend to go at a snail's pace with my money. I'm a bit uncomfortable leveraging myself with credit, but would rather take a slow and steady approach of buying a rental home, getting a renter in it, pay off the first home, buy another rental property, the take the money from the 2 rentals and roll that into the 3rd home, etc. I'm sure there are so many factors that I'm absolutely clueless about (taxes, crazy tenants, property management, etc.). I'd like to learn as much as I can from the community to begin informing myself to move in the right direction.

Thanks!