Of course, the timeline seen on TV is often a much quicker turnaround than in reality.

I have no problem putting in long days to turn it into reality and have even registered for a pre licensing course to get my Massachusetts realtor license.

It can be hard for us to see because we are "zoomed in" to our own experiences and timeline, but in reality what we are experiencing right now has been experienced in several waves before over the past 100 years.For us right now debt is unbelievably inexpensive, which creates a huge demand both from the homebuyer and investor pools,  There are other factors influencing returns downward, too, but at the end of the day the diminishing returns we're seeing are part of an economic cycle and should be shaken up by some event or series of events in the future.Or it won't . . . here's to speculating (clink)!

The reality is they make their money teaching classes, not doing deals.

Words are meant to convey ideas, and when someone plays fast and loose with words and makes up flashy statements that twist reality to put more money in their pocket....we call those kinds of people con artists. 

The reality RE is risky and unknown enough that if you are not feeling good about the deal then my advice is to go with your gut. 

The duplex appraised at 380k so that is good, however with the rent being 1200$/side here is the breakdown:Do appraisal values typically come in higher/lower than reality, or are they usually pretty spot on? 

What you don't want to do is think you can rent the property fo $1200 when in reality is smaller or uglier than you think so it ends up renting for only $800. 

@Mike D'ArrigoThanks for the honesty and reality of it.

In reality both are true, and both have some suck related to them, but it's not as simple as that.