He was fired.2 days later a major component of the facility he worked for broke. 

If I'm a more passive RE investor (at least as of now I would be; I'm catching the RE investing bug and will likely become more active in the future), could I count things like "evaluating the neighborhood" as a business activity (given that is a component of RE investing)?  

To ensure the most effective campaign, there are 4 components to consider:1) Have a really good lead list (niche lists are the best)2) Use mailers that get noticed and make you stand out from your competition3) Be consistent with your mailers4) Follow up, Follow up, Follow up

You are right, a development project that has both commercial and residential components is a elephant....a very large prehistoric elephant.  

It's important to find a lender you can communicate with, that can give you time frames that align with your properties, and have rates and terms that fit your criteria.

@Valerie Hazel Maddox, thank you for your comments on the value of motivational components to investment seminars.  

To that end, I would assume your going to want to align with other professionals on a team basis to complete the deals that you are working on.

Some foreclosure defense attorneys, and some scammers (not necessarily mutually exclusive) tried to make arguments that using MERS instead of recording and paying fees in the local recorder' office somehow made them less enforcable, absolute total crap.And yeah, one of the main components of the scammers spin on MERS was that they could win quiet title suits against banks that used MERS.  

Sourcing great deals is a key component!

The nice thing about a cost age study is that it would assign a value to each of those components.