Study your butt off, know your investments, sound intelligent, and hand them the BP spreadsheet:)Almost at the same time, find a RE agent that will help you find deals.Contractors, unless you are doing the repairs yourself?

I am all about leveraging but doing it intelligently and not blindly. 

If you have just a little, tiny bit of intelligence and the all more important work ethic, most goals aren't nearly as hard as they seem.Lastly, if you're financially successful in REI (or whatever), you start to taste how your success gives you the ability to help others, and that's what its really about!

Thanks to all of you that are actively building this community.On to my question.As I think about breaking into the world of real estate investing, I'm deeply concerned about developing an intelligent way of thinking about the RE market cycles as it relates to investments.

I'm not quite sure how deep the process should be before it would be intelligent to make an offer.

Otherwise, the intelligent investors are hoarding cash and preparing for the next buying opportunity, which in most markets is probably coming in the next 9-24 months.  

@Scott Hollister - Intelligent plan on using the lease method.

As well as general advice in real estate investing and I thank you all for the amount of intelligence and real world honest experiences everyone has shared.I currently live in Western KY.

@Elizabeth Guarnieri , one of the most intelligent things you can do is to walk away when it doesn't work.

Instead of me buying the software it seems more intelligent to just pay one of the users for a list.