I recently graduated college and started my career as a mechanical engineer and have recently decided that while I love my job I don't want to work for the rest of my life, and real estate investing makes the most sense to me in order to gain financial freedom before I turn 60.I have been reading a ton of real estate books and discovered the bigger pockets book on rental property investing which gave me a great introduction to all the topics and possibilities in real estate.

My friend will do all of the work with the house, gaining 65-70% on monthly profits and I, 30-35%.

When you have capital gain income there are some other guidelines which you have to follow. 

For two reasons:1) you’ll gain valuable landlord experience which will go a long way with a lender in he future. 2) you’ll build equity which will you can use to leverage future deals. 

I'm interested in buying Bay Area property off market to rehab but then live in it for a couple years to capture tax advantage with the gain when I sell, then repeat.

We used the gains on our UK home to buy a rental house in the US, when we were posted back again. 

I believe the best way to learn is not only by going out and doing it BUT most importantly listening from peers - as they can share valuable experience and lessons from past success and failures. 

I think the list is your most valuable asset.

In my opinion, you need to assume you're going to have to pay the capital gains tax when you're comparing different scenarios.

Okay, let’s see how these same properties work for them, assuming everything else is the same:Essentially, they’ve created a $30k annual earned income on these 11 properties, which can be used to pay executive salaries, and passed on to shareholders as dividends—and they’ll earn another $300k in capital gains if nothing extraordinary happens--and remember, AH4R alone has over 50,000 homes in 22 states.It sounds like a license to print money.Risks do exist for these REITs, though.