and flipping is just another job .. were as being an agent you don't take downside monetary risk.. you get paid whether the project makes money or not..

Downside of college degree: If we spend tuition on real estate deals we would be more likely to be more wealthy. 

When people go around saying debt has 0 downside and you should get as much as possible, you should drain the banks ballsack of debt all over your face. 

There's been talk of Essex County having potential and that's where I'm starting to look now, the downside to this area is that there seems to be much more crime (i.e.

The downside is that they were pricier than I could have gotten, but it wouldn't have been worth the headache to ME to act as the GC for my job.

Good point, one of the downsides of a hot market!

This late in the real estate cycle you can best hedge your downside by investing in value-add properties.

The only real "downside" to it I can see is that part of the contract is a non-compete clause of greater radius than my current one.

Since the stakes are higher with this, what is the downside of managing this myself?

The other downside to an SBA loan is that they usually have harsher pre-payment penalties so if its a turn-around property that you want to refinance within 2-4 years, the SBA will take a bite out of you (Usually 5% year 1, 4% year two, etc until the 5 year mark).The SBA also adds a bit of Bureaucracy to the process so you want o be sure that you are using a bank that has done A LOT of SBA loans...don't be the person that the bank "learns the SBA" on....that will be painful.SBA will also (generally speaking) let you go up to 90% where traditional loans are usually in the 80% range.