And that business can certainly be RE -- whether development, rentals, notes, etc, if you have a trusted management team running the business, there are generally ways you can completely extract yourself from the business.Sure, the business could fail, the stock could tank, and you could be left without financial independence, but again, that can happen with govenrment-backed interest-bearing securities as well.

BTW, in the DM world 2% is considered it pretty meaningful accomplishments.Good luck.

I'm planning on going to the courthouse to extract some probate leads myself.

As with all licensing laws, it is a tool for the government to extract fees.

If you have access to a public website and need to ‘capture’ the data from it to create your database or spreadsheet for your leads (assuming your county doesn’t already offer the information in a spreadsheet format), the keywords you need to learn are “data mining,” “screen scraping”, and “data extraction” (I had never heard of either term to describe capturing info from a website until I went to craigslist and found someone under the ‘services’ section who offered IT services….and explained what I needed.

So when you are out and see a place you can instantly extract the sale info on the property run the numbers for you instead of going and using your own your spreadsheets etc.

I'm using the MLS to extract the data.

No need to apologize for making a profit while doing it.I suggest that you also think about allowing real estate to catapult you into something (perhaps) more meaningful like charitable work.

The study uses data extracted from local recorder, courthouse and tax assessment records to determine whether the purchasers buying foreclosed houses from banks, HUD, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are owner-occupants or absentee owners using single family homes as rental or vacation properties.

Educating yourself through books, podcasts, and these forums will help you speak the lingo and start having meaningful conversations.