Which path to choose?

[Daniel Eastman]

Hello BP community. Thanks for your warm welcome. Let's get down to brass tax.

A little about me...

1. I'm busy. I have a great wife, a bunch of kids and time is precious.

2. I have a very well paying full time job that is demanding.

3. I have family in the RE investing game, but am only beginning to look into it.

Maybe I need to be convinced that Real Estate is for me. My financial strategy has been to save money by investing it into an Index fund and watch it grow. This literally takes zero effort and hopefully the market returns over a long amount of time are about 7-8%.

Real estate on the other hand would be a way to diversify my portfolio as I believe, as many do, that a stock market correction is coming. I would be interested in buy and hold. As I am just beginning, it is intimidating to get started. I would need a trusted RE agent, to learn how to properly evaluate a potential property, how to quickly analyze repair costs, find a reliable handyman/contractor, analyze if I need to use a PM or to self manage and all that is entailed with that, learn to fully maximize rent, and the list goes on.

This just seems like a steep price of time and effort to get into a market that can be volatile at times. I also feel with the limited knowledge I have , that looking for 2% properties are hard to come by in today's market, so maybe it is the wrong time to be getting into RE. However, I do want to get into it, and maybe I am over analyzing. Someone convince me that this is a better investment vehicle than Vanguard and where to start.

I am located in the Abilene, TX area.