I personally would recommend getting your license because you won't have to rely on anyone else for running comps or putting in offers.Lastly -- Passive real estate is an overused phrase for people who only want the benefits of real estate and not the work that goes into actually building a portfolio that produces that type of income.  

My low end rentals on Maui produce an average of 25% COC returns, plus appreciation.

I set up all of my properties as buy and hold income stream producers.

This is the method used to value income producing assets.

Plenty of part-time agents (or non producing...) 

They produced great dividends, but I wasn’t combining that with a market analysis.

You can get a very good idea about how healthy an association is with a quick glance at their budget.Let me know if you have any other questions.

It's producing cash flow.

To me, the 2nd chart which tells me the business is making ZERO income over the 5 years seems more right than the first chart.Just think of Year 2 to year 4.In Chart 1, you would think this is a healthy business with $10k income for those 3 years.BUT, in Chart 2, it tells you that the business actually made ZERO INCOME!

We disagree the market is still solid, supply is low, builders are not out producing demand, rates are low, defaults are low.