I have several colleagues who do real estate investing full time and have found a lot of success and fulfillment from it, and that excites me and motivates the heck out of me!  

Oh, and I signed up for a local meetup here in Chicago.I'm partnering with a lifelong buddy of mine to get the train rolling. 

Myself being a developer this was my specialty but I always did equity participation loans. in other words HML interest plus a good % of the up side. bottom line if you want to buy land you should have all cash unless your willing to give up equity .and well maybe that's better than not buying it at all.I can't tell you how many folks I have talked to over the years and they say oh man too expensive only to never do the deal at all.. something of a good deal is better than nothing of a good deal.not to mention you could create a lifelong lending partner.. so spead the wealth you may like how it turns out. 

I am a lifelong learner college was just not a fit for me.

Last statistic I read is we are taking in about 60 people a day to portland. you then look at your major employers, Amazon is building or it might be done a fulfillment center, Nike has said they want to double in size and have committed to a number of new employees in there tax incentive, intel is up in the air, they are kind of struggling since they missed out on the cell phone manufacturing, I am not sure what the hospital is doing out there.

But 1) check against another lender just to be sure, and 2) make sure you're not also agreeing to something - as part of the loan terms - that you're not going to want or be able to fulfill.

I don't want to take a job to fulfill this requirement.

This is their protection if you get hit by a bus and can't fulfill your agreement.

These people are ultra rich psychopaths who have nothing left to do but fulfill a destiny that was forged a long time ago.

If you add >10% in value, then your equity position doing VA 10% down overall will end up better than 20% down.Your remaining VA entitlement for the next deal, a year from now after you've fulfilled your promise to live there for a year (provided you intend to live in the next house, too), or two years from now when you want to use a VA loan and need to have landlord experience to make the rental income count, is based on your loan amount this time.