Its either trial and error for free your way to the top, or split a profit with a mentor and get to the top faster.

Either from hiring a pro to teach you or through trial and error.  

Everything I find when I google 'sell house fast' or some other variation seems to be very long and involve the words 'cash', 'fast', 'house' .

My long term goal is to leave my day-time job (Project Manager for pharmaceutical research trials) and spend time RE Investing as my source of income and spend time with my children (10 weeks old and 3 years).

Outlook is slight increase, but wide variation in opinion on where we go from here.  

MBA is great, if you can get somebody else to pay for it :)Control Systems engineering helped to design automated business systems and assess what can be measured and controlled and what can't.Spacecraft engineering helped with risk management and contingency planning (multiple exit strategies).The rest was from DIY research, trial, and error.

On the edge of less than ideal areas, but I'be been fortunate with keeping better tenants in there and having a great property manager (that was a trial finding in itself).Chris

This is a variation on the cash flow vs. appreciation topic.

State of OR CA and WA all have this variation of law that came in right around the crash 07 08.. if you bought a home from someone in foreclosure and then flipped it in less than a year 80% of your net proceeds or some number like that must be sent to the person you bought it from.. up until then that was the majority of how I acquired our portfolio we bought at courthouse NO law you had to pay them back if it went to public auction.. but if you snagged them before and you flipped it.. this laws came into effect and is still in effect..

These variations of discounts will largely depend on where you are if you are selling to local buyers or nationally.