If I had to do it over I would have concentrated on real estate in college and sprinkled in some classes of finance, urban planning or construction.  

Michael,Long Beach has some nice duplexes sprinkled throughout the city that have come on the market the past few years that have always seemed decently attractive to me.

Where I take issue with your response to him is when you, as the experienced person he wishes to learn from, sprinkles useful advice in between underhanded jabs like:- "Pull your head out of the clouds" - "If you think you can invest in real estate while working part-time at a sub shop and living in mom's basement, you've on a path to major disappointment" - "You're looking at older, successful people and thinking you can take shortcuts.

I am sorry some of that stuff has happened to you...I am sure there were many learning experiences sprinkled in there.

Needs to sprinkled for a leasing of the entire basement or a firewall to reduce open footage to 5,000 or less.The basement is mostly carpeted with several rooms that were rented in the past.

I'm not going to argue with the great JWise because his neighborhood grading list is very strong and helpful, but I would argue that a lot of the west side neighborhoods are really C to C- with some D's sprinkled in there, but still way better than areas on the east side. 

The holding company will house a property management company, general investments (not just real estate) and a bunch of other stuff.The plan is to start with a buy and hold strategy with a few flips sprinkled in mostly because I really like doing construction work.

My personal experience is that in July and August it would be really nice to have a sprinkled yard.

I'd pull back a little earth from the foundation--make a tiny trench kind of thing, and sprinkle DE liberally all around the foundation.

I plan on keeping lower end houses at owner finance and maybe sprinkle in a higher end rental here and there