I have started my own investing company now and have both an acquisition website to reach motivated sellers and a retail website to promote my wholesale and other exit strategy properties.

I have a deep burning passion for this business, I work every single day towards it, I work full time in Medical IT, and I enjoy my family.

So I would say that the right investment needs the skill to invest, Trust, know the market so you don't get burned and the mentality that the pen is mightier than the sword.

There are also scam artists, like anything else, who promote these strategies so the best thing to do is, initially, to talk to someone locally about how such arrangements are or are not done.

Husband has a W2 job, and I'm going to be doing REI full-time since we have more than enough cash from an inheritance (and I'm super burned out from being in that field).

Hard money is high interest, and if you don’t know what you are doing and you don’t have a good exit strategy, then yes, you may very well get burned.

Even in big cities the network of professional communities is small and connected; burning bridges has little practical upside.

I don't want to be seen as promoting my business here so I won't mention it further). 

Got burned in Phoenix back in 2006 buying SFH, but have been thinking about trying a diff strategy again...Because of that, I have been watching this large PM, listings they post on their website.....I noticed that in the past 12 months, their listings are apparently getting much better, going from rough area properties to A-/B+ properties....I wonder if even they got burned out dealing with rough neighborhood tenants....

I'm OK with taking it easy those 2 years as I'd got quite burned out and had some heavy family things to take care of.