Contrary to Melanie's awesome performance, most individual RE investors per multiple academic studies do worse by 3-4% per year than the REITs do, and many reasons for this, REITs have access to lower cost of capital, lower property management costs (Realty Income-O-, spends 0.6% a year on all management), and many other reasons, but big problem, REITs as very liquid, then people can buy high and sell low causing poor returns too, as above. 

The next study below from Cambridge associates looked at 942 funds from 1986-2016 data and showed around 3.9% outperformance of equity REITs over private real estate with median leverage between 54%-60% so not as high as individual house flippers but still with significant leverage:There are many other studies in US and also by EPRA out of Europe in developed countries as well as many academic studies, https://www.nareitphotolibrary.com/m/750b587aba063147/origin...and they mostly all agree that on the whole, on average, for the Average investor, that private Real Estate investing is statistically worse than stock market in US by about 2% and worse than buying equity REITs by around 4%, over last 20/30/50 years. 

For $12,800 you can get a 4 course Graduate Certificate in Real Estate from Harvard….https://extension.harvard.edu/academics/programs/real-estate... 

I know enough to know that there are so many unknown variables out there when it comes to investing in stocks that I've decided to just side with the very convincing and the strongly defended academic theories of guys like John Bogle, founder of Vanguard.Real estate is still an area I'm trying to learn as much about as possible before making any long term commitments that impact my finances and lifestyle.  

The bookshelf is integrated for a neat academic theme.

Everything from travel nurses, to academics, to relocations to insurance placements and everything in between.

I will comment on what I liked and what were some of the “bumps in the road”.About me: I am an academic, I do nerdy things to make a living.

It's tricky in the beginning to get exposure to different asset types and therefore strategies, except in the academic sense via YT, BP, books & courses. 

US stock market, aka MAG-7, have outperformed 12% to 9.5% with REITs in last 10 yrs and even more strongly in last 5 years at 15.7% to 10.3%, perhaps this will continue but the sp500 currently with a 34.4 Shiller PE, which is much higher than in October of 1929, and that wasn't the best time to start investing, please read the following 1 article and then the graphs/tables, There are also multiple academic studies at the European real estate research site EPRAREITs vs.

Good luck on your academic journey and future endeavors in real estate!