The barrier to entry is high for multifamily buildings and most are traded off market.

Finally, what education, skills and/or experience do you have that you think are well-suited to being a real estate investor? 

I like Buy and hold and using that income to pay down my debt vs trading my time on the clock to do that.  

There are a handful of commercial brokers in Denver who control most of the MF market and most of their deals are traded off market.

At 19 I searched for mentors to help me learn how to trade the financial markets (stocks) now @ 20 I trade and I’m able to stay profitable, even though I have a long ways to go.

Just move on.There's a lot more verification that could be done to sift down through this but I think you would waste a lot of time and wind up in the same place anyway.And remember, anyone with some skills in Word or Publisher software can create all kinds of fancy-dancy documents proving stuff.

Some examples of potential future drivers will be: something similar to what Bush did when he signed the American Dream Downpayment Act of 2003, China easing up on Capital Controls (this would be a great sign, but with trade war and China's issues with their own economy I seriously doubt this), IPOs over last 2 years creating much needed wealth for employees (takes 12-24 months for them to be able to exercise stock options), a dot com like bubble in the stock market (I think this is most likely scenario given stock buybacks and QE and I won't be surprised to see stocks doing something absolutely unbelievable over the next 1-5 years similar to 97-end of dot com bubble), or heavy doses of QE and easier access to credit for most people.Working in the Bay Area, we saw first hand how many buyers were foreign and how many paid for houses in cash without even looking at the homes in quite a few cases. 

New entrants to the landlording world will likely be most affected due both to learning curve and cost basis.Since you are in Kitsap CO,  Bremerton is probably your best market for investment real estate;  there are usually several small rental complexes available over there an any given time;   its certainly on my radar  (as while I'm in seattle,  I will no longer invest in seattle) but there are also other secondary/tertiary markets that might be worth looking at;  just make sure that the area has a decent economic situation,  and/or the property you invest in is substantially more desirable that most of its competitive segment is so that if things soften up economically,  you are still holding a property people will want to live in if they have lots of options.There are also other types of RE investing - commercial, out of state, flipping,  etc which depending on you and your husbands interests, skill set, and risk tolerance could be worth looking at. 

Jack of all trades, master of none.

@Jacquelyn Dockery, I would recommend investing some time up front to understand your unique skills and constraints and then try mapping those to a specific strategy that is the best fit.