I'm relatively new also and am focusing on wholesaling for much the same reasons you stated.

One article says that there has been a sharp increase in the number of families that are actually sending money FROM Mexico to their relatives in the US to help out.

Loan modification (relatively unlikely on an investment property)6.

Then, they talk you into a relatively expensive bootcamp.

I'm in the process of setting goals and plans for myself, but much farther out than normal, I would like to set RE Goals out to 20 years to reach my desired net worth.I've realized that setting high goals for yourself aren't a bad thing, I set my real estate related goals to more than double what I expected I could do, and so far for 2008 I'm at about 70% of my goal which isn't bad at all becuase I surpassed my low goal half way through the year.

So not only to convervative hard working people have to bailout the deadbeats because we have to pay for there modification through more taxes but now our value in our house will drop in relation to the % of principal write downs.

But even with hard work, you have to have a lot of pieces you don't control fall into place.A couple of very interesting books related to this topic are "Outliers" by Malcom Gladwell and "The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Until the health inspector who is also a landlord in the city told me that Home Depot sells ones that have sensors in them and will go off as soon as another one goes off in the house.

The home must be inspected by the Health Dept. before it is rented.

All the points made about insurance esp workers comp and health insurance are very meaningful as well.