You'll need to liquidate your positions or leverage them to create cash for your initial real estate investments.Sec. 1031 allows you to sell any type of real estate held for investment purposes and purchase any type of real estate held for investment and defer the tax on the gain.  

I invest in Rock County as well but only stay inside city limits of places larger than 30,000.

Brunswick County and its beach communities have promising areas, but again you would be competing against larger track builders, etc who offer fair price point homes.

Checking/Liquid Investments: 100KIncome:1.

Hi BP,I'm in the military and we're moving to a larger home just down the street because my wife is pregnant.

Below I detail some ideas regarding market exposure, liquidity, and interest rate risks.

We replace the lists with fresh data every 6 months and keep on rolling...But there are special groups like expired listings or tax liens or divorce that we might just hit once or twice near the event and not necessarily continue mailing to them.Also, think about how DIRECT MAIL fits into your larger marketing strategy - we also like OUTDOOR (billboards, bandits, etc.) and ONLINE (AdWords).  

We have many clients with deep pockets and large incomes that prefer to build a large real estate portfolio with our turnkey properties primarily because they don't have any "extra" time to get involved actively in real estate investing.Other factors to consider are your knowledge, contacts, capital, and other resources that may be necessary to do it on your own.

He's said things like, "I don't want to be a slum lord" "I like the liquidity of my stocks" "I can make a better return in stocks," "I don't like for my money to be tied up in an illiquid property," "I could make the same kind of money in a REIT or MREIT."

Its way larger than most of the neighboring lots.