There will be ups and downs and market swings based on both internal and external factors beyond our control but I expect your home will continue to outperform inflation rates.

Carswell - tons of books to read and podcast to listen to here on BP, best advice I can give you is find someone you can intern or shadow that invest in the type of real estate you want to invest in.

My situation is I am switching jobs internally with the same company, however I am taking a 50% pay cut and don't want to risk my debt to income ratio on a cash out as neither unit is rented just yet.

I would intern at what ever real estate companies your interested in.My daughter was interested in finance.. and she interned during collage with a high level appraisal company that did apprasing for emanate domain cases.. and she worked on the one in Napa CA were the state and city bought out a big swatch of the napa river for flood control project and many business had to be relocated from hotel to shopping center to car dealer all of them needed to be valued.. it was high level work she enjoyed it.she then went on to graduate top of her class at Davis CA.. in managerial economics degree and promptly got snapped up my Intel after offers from Apple and Micro soft.now 14 years later she is a SEnior controller and a Dave Ramsey disciple which means at her age home just about paid for 2 kids in grade school and NO debt and a ton of savings and max's out her 401k.. she has little interest in real estate she owns one rental but only rents it to family. that was her path.  

I've been absolutely slammed at work (in international financial consulting no less.

You will find the loan terms to be not as good because the lender instead of borrowing the money from the main banking system will instead have to self fund the loan internally and the money cost more to them.

“Producing a ready able and willing buyer” does not trigger a commissions due on the day you “produce” the buyer.....at the earliest, thus clause would kick in after the buyer fails to perform and has been found to be in default, usually by arbitration, a court proceeding or mutual agreement between the buyer and seller.

My personal preference is to look at metrics which take the opportunity cost of capital into account such as internal rate of return (IRR), net present value (NPV), or profitability index (PI).

Require co-signers (usually parents) if they have less than 3 years of credit history (This could be difficult because a majority of my tenants are international students).  

Other than one JetBlue Mint flight in the past year, I can't recall in the past decade that myself or my family has paid for air travel or hotel stay (domestic or international).