The books in the BP store are excellent - Brandon's book on Low and No Money Down, Anson's book on Finding and Funding Great Deals, and J.

Having 5 (maybe up to eight) free and clear houses in good locations and good tenants, and continue working my full-time job with no pressure to do overtime or with the possibility to retire early, and travel more or spend quality time with my future family would be an ideal goal for me.What would you guys do?

Hey BiggerPockets,I'm interested in starting my real estate investing with small apartment buildings (around 5-12 units) in the Pittsburgh area but am having a tough time finding real estate agents who excel with these property types.Any suggestions on generating leads and finding agents who specialize in this apartment building size?

@Joshua Paul the answer to your question is that yes, this is an excellent idea!

He could make a better living doing and have a better quality of life working in another state but insists on staying so he can be discovered and it's stifling his ability to get ahead in life.

For flips, I excel in valuing the as-is and as-repaired values and produce forward looking valuations based on market trends.

I heard MIT has an excellent Commercial RE program

I felt that my quantitative background can give me a great advantage because I probably spend more time on excel analysing and building models than most agents out there.

Something I did was build my own excel sheet from looking at several different investors who also give out advice.

I am becoming very frustrated with my investor as I continually send good flips her way with excel spreadsheets to back up repair estimates (we own a remodeling company so we are pretty good at figuring it out) as well as CMA's that back up my ARV because I am a licensed agent with access to the MLS.