I'm currently half-way through the Beginners Guide to real estate investing.I like the vehicle of multi-family unit investing, and I'm thinking of going with the buy-and-hold strategy.

RE agent will be my vehicle for that!

I’m learning about investing in tax liens in the US and it sounds like an interesting investment vehicle.

The steps I am taking before Real Estate Investing is simple.Pay off my vehicles ($900/mo in payments)Purchase Personal Property with Cash ($1,000/mo in payments)Streamline my business (I am a business owner, so streamlining only increases my income)Find Duplex or Bigger, buy with cash (I want my first handful of doors to be paid off from the start, gives me more equity to play with when I am going for bigger items)With my first two steps, I drop my living expenses down to 15k a year for a three person family.

(Let's hope it never comes to that, I am the guy who spends so much of my time touting Sect 8 as a great investment vehicle specifically in poorer neighborhoods...it's a profitable program to participate in, let's hope politics doesn't besmirch the image)Keep on investing responsibly, like all things this too shall pass...I just hope we aren't doing too much damage to the economy overall.

@Reed Udy Since you are building in a rural area, I'd assume most people have vehicles to get around and would have use for that space. 

@Rob K.A Checkbook IRA would provide the advantage of having those brokerage assets inside the one vehicle, and the ability to either quickly move back and forth between real estate and stocks as opportunity dictates, or keep the income produced by the real estate meaningfully deployed. 

An FA could be completely 100% ethical and stand by what they recommend, and truly believe in what they recommend, yet not have experience in or access to other investment vehicles like real estate that could potentially be better for the client.  

I’m absolutely stunned by how such a savvy investment vehicle can be, albeit based on one’s creativity, accessed with no or low money down!

So the advantage is you can customize it to your particular risk tolerance very precisely).