But if you know the ins and outs of real estate investing, the costs associated with managing a property, you talk and discuss intelligently with someone that is a lot farther away.

If you are intelligent, have common sense, and are business oriented you really do not need school.

Search here on BP for tenant problems and then make sure your lease has clauses that address these issues.DO NOT ASSUME tenants are intelligent!

Summary: things may get a little wobbly but calm intelligent actions will prevail and things will go on and in 6 months to 1yr we will be through this and it will be more a blip than anything else....

If you can't speak intelligently on the subject, bring someone that can or you will lose the seller.

You cannot predict the future but you can make an intelligent guess about its direction and it sounds like you are on your way. 

When you are ready, I would suggest you get a pre-qual letter from a bank, and have intelligent questions and information about what exactly you are looking for in a few specific areas. 

It's a market full of intelligent people all looking for a deal and an angle, so information doesn't stay secret for long.The West End has been up and coming for a while, but it's priced in at this point and those properties are selling for a lot.My general recommendation is to find a neighborhood you like but feel priced out of, and then go in any direction and find where the neighborhood ends or starts to change - where it borders with another area.

Provided some really intelligent advice

I am a newbie investor and I discovered biggerpockets when I read "The Book on Rental Property Investing: How to Create Wealth and Passive Income Through Intelligent Buy and Hold Real Estate Investing" by Brandon Turner.