The main thing with real estate investment, from my limited perspective, would be to find the niche that best suits your investment style and personality and learn everything about that niche and do it as well as possible while continuing to learn and grow both your business and career.

I want someone with proven success with style, content and timing to do a turn key campaign. 

And in a catastrophic downturn you can lose a property or two and not hurt your retirement life style. 

For me, it is a single family ranch style home with 2/3 beds and 1.5/2 baths that smells funny and needs the carpet ripped out.

I suspect now its going great one of the centers was BRAND NEW CONSTRUCTION.. but the 600 homes that were suppose to go in next door got shelved. in a 08 style melt down NOTHING is immune some areas trundle through other areas its mass extinction. 

Some things to look out for are the fees. environmental fees, excessive weight fees, another trick of the industry is billing cycles. some will bill monthly so you are billed 12 times a year others may bill every 4 weeks so you get billed 13 times a year (52 weeks/4= 13 bill)based on my experience the big guys tend to play ball and kill on volume to shut out little guys. also these little guys rely on the big guys station to dump, so they charge a base fee and mark it up or put add on to make money.

I recently attempted a 2 second Canadian style brrrr with a hiccough along the way.

The red flags were stacking up, but his total shift at the end to Seinfeld soup Nazi style "no house for you" threw me off.

I say potentially because although 3/2 is common in the area these style of property is not.

I'll take the broken HDTV and mount it on the wall of a bedroom (replacing an old style tv).