If you were planning to leave your job soon and exit the rat race using real estate investing as your vehicle, then that clearly wouldn't work.  

Shells are easy to find but require so much more work during the rehab process, while Livables are rare at a good price with heavy competition, but a lot less rehab worries.Looking for suggestions.

Michael Lam Hi Michael,Apologies for late reply, My Credit score took a huge decrease because of a lemon vehicle situation.

If you purchase the vehicle, sure it costs you $50,295.26, but you at least have a vehicle to drive at the end of your payment terms.People typically rent vs. own homes because 1) They can't afford to buy.  2) They want to be more mobile.  3) They don't want maintenance.  

You need first to determine what your specific target investment vehicle is to be. once you decide that you then specialise your education around that vehicle.

I will certainly be investing time into applying these strategies once I move into my "heavy investing" time (i.e., after school).

In other words, if the borrower had $300,000 of debts before the short sale (including mortgage, 2nd mortgage, car loans, credit cards, student loans, accrued tax liability, loans from parents or IRA, everything) and only $200,000 of assets (including FMV of home as determined by the short sale contract, equity in vehicles, so-called "sticks and stuff" being the total of all routine personal possessions, and value of retirement accounts) the the borrower is $100,000 under water or insolvent.  

A couple vehicles pull in and one of them is a realtor that saw the sign and wanted to know if she could show it to her clients.  

Also been hearing that now would be a good time to be cash heavy due to economic / political climates.What would you do?

Its absolutely not crazy to consider out of state properties as your first RE investment vehicle.