I recently closed on my first house where I will rent out the spare rooms.

Only buy something you can afford on your own however, then rent out the spare bedrooms (if you wouldn't mind living with roommates).

And if you can't manage the business of you and create spare cashflow, then you may be in for a big failure trying to managing a real estate portfolio.  

I have been putting all the spare money I can get into a no load growth mutual fund trying to build it up to about $10k so that I should have enough for a down payment for a small duplex if I can get lucky enough to find my first decent one for around $100k and pay 10% with positive cash flow.

In their spare time, of course. ;-)

But that firearm, like the spare tire on your car or the Fire Extinguisher in the kitchen, is a nice backup to have "just in case."

The deal I saw blow up family wise had to do with the guy spending every spare moment working on a duplex I sold him.When his wife said get rid of it or I will divorce you, he gave it back to my investor (sold on contract) and I ended up buying it.

ALL real estate guru stuff is an outgrowth, twist, or extension (often fantasy) of Bill Nickerson's "How I turned $5000 into a Million Investing in Real Estate in my Spare Time".

This could be one answer.No, what I am saying is we have a very large growing population of one single type of homeowners: investors, and in due time a good bunch of them will be selling their houses on the MLS flooding the market in a compact time frame.

To many people, There is only financially independent for now.Some landlords are leveraged way over their heads, putting every spare dollar and HELOCing up to their eyeballs to get more property and do more deals.In other words, money is part of the formula.