It seem 2 (Stephen and Robert) think leverage is needed to make real money as a landlord.

I don't like trouble makers.

Former electrical (the best engineers) engineer here.Engineering teaches you to think logically and avoid emotional-based decisions.Most engineers though, are not decision-makers, so they suffer from analysis-paralysis. 

Several years later, my $150K trigger hit and I sat down and determined that it was still a money maker, and so I set a new price Trigger to $200K. 

I am currently looking out of state for low priced, cash-flow makers.

In fact, it was clear to policy-makers that there wasn't enough gold in the system. 

If you want to make real estate your living, the way to do it is to make it your job and generally speaking becoming a broker is the "college free" way of doing it.

I have found, contractors love taking jobs that keep them more indoors in the winter time. 

It's my experience though, that there's more face time meetings, trainings in GA REIA, gareia.org, plus they have their Deal maker's email list for real time problem solving, sharing contractors and buying/selling deals.But I belong to all the REIAs because I find excellent value in all the orgs.

I also love working with my hands and hate sitting at a desk 9 hours a day so hopefully one day I can make real estate a full time job by working for myself.