what you will find is that some are just smarter than others.. and most are not investment cash flow analytical types.. its not their skill set.. but you take a good retail agent that works with the top of the retail market and they make big bucks like 500k to over 1 million a year in commissions..

Do you have superior analytical abilities?

The analytical introvert teams up with the visionary extrovert.

@Jarib RivasI don't have an idea of the effect of a trade war on real estate markets but I think it's an interesting question.My hunch would be that the relative purchasing power of the dollar (and then it follows value of real estate backed by dollars) is affected by the exchange rate.Would be curious if others with a more academic and analytical macro economic and finance mind will weigh in....

I am on the sales aspect side of thing, whereas he is on the analytical side of things.

@Matt Andrews, thank you for these analytical points.

E.g. iLevel (if running a fund), or the Yardi / ResMan platform (not very nice from an IR perspective, also minimal data analytics)The above are just a few of the items you will need (and might be already using). 

Although I'm new to real estate I'm hoping that my analytical skills and creative problem solving experience can be leveraged successfully in this arena, especially with respect to buy-and-hold deals for income replacement. 

On the other, my research will likely be less accurate than a professional companies (considering I do not have an education in analytics), which could lead to potential losses greater than purchasing professional research.

I’m typically too analytical in hopes of reducing my risk so I tend to stick to only doing what the experts or books suggest.