If you really want to get into real estate investing, rather than gambling and speculation I suggest you start listening to the BiggerPockets podcast and reading the BiggerPockets Publishing books.

Let the gambling and hyperbole begin!

@Brad Koegel gambling can help to pay student loans quicker if done properly.

I mean appreciation in the short to medium term seems like a gamble but I assume some people are considering it a sure thing because from where I am sitting bad deals are bought and sold every day haha.

@Grin Dominee Alan just know that you are gambling on appreciation (which it is Hawaii the best place in the world) but if there is a correction now you are underwater and need a decade to recover.

They make more money collecting insurance premiums then money they spend paying out insurance policies.It's like gambling at the casino.

I gamble with my future in real estate, but never in the stock market.

But hey that's what sells how to training and bird dogging and its those that want the big returns.. without really realizing the risk / reward quotient and that's OK.. kind of like building a stock portfolio.. but at your base in notes it good to have some rocks that you can count on then if you want to gamble on the NPN and do all that leg work etc.. one can give it a go..

As a new investor, blindly bidding on a property seems like a pretty big gamble if you've never seen the inside of property.

@John Fulton I'd say both if you are comfortable with the uncontrollability element that comes with investing in the S&P.