This irritated me very much, b/c he also hadn't been great about timely following up with me on other issues, then he drops this on me.

The reality is that an agent has less skin in the game than you do.

I personally spent about 20 hours crawling through the attic on hands and knees with trash bags and a shop vac, removing critter pee-soaked insulation, rodent poop, snake skins and a dead squirrel.

The best way to gain experience is to team up with and experienced investor to help you get some skin in the game.

Consider teaming up with an experienced investor for your first project to help you get some skin in the game.

I agree that the market is completely different than in 2008 (as we are not nearly as leveraged as we were, buyers now have skin in the game in regards to down payments, most investment properties create positive cash flow vs 2008's negative cash flow appreciation game, and a lot more properties are owned out right vs financed) but there is no arguing that inventory has been rising week after week for months and continues to rise.

There are many ways to skin that cat.I would suggest you attend some local meetups and see what others are doing locally.

This way they have some skin in the game, to stabilize tenants, if needed.

But while I can't be mad at myself for being so disciplined about paying down my loans that I'm now only looking at 9K left to finish off, I am slightly irritated that it took me that long to realize I could be MAKING more of a return on the money I was handing over to the banks.

Being a buy and hold investor takes thick skin, I'm learning that everyday.