The best strategy is to not quit your day job until you've built a portfolio big enough meet your income requirements.
You have three potential paths. 1) Build an active investing business, something that takes time. It is also not a linear path, so there will be bumps along the way. You will need a pretty good buffer. It is best to have other income coming in. 2) You could just invest passively. Since returns won't be as good, you will need several million dollars deployed to meet a $300k salary. 3) A hybrid of active and passive.
The best strategy is to not quit your day job until you've built a portfolio big enough meet your income requirements.
You have three potential paths. 1) Build an active investing business, something that takes time. It is also not a linear path, so there will be bumps along the way. You will need a pretty good buffer. It is best to have other income coming in. 2) You could just invest passively. Since returns won't be as good, you will need several million dollars deployed to meet a $300k salary. 3) A hybrid of active and passive.
I wouldn't stop what you are doing, but you could gradually jump into real estate. That's a good amount saved up to buy quite a bit of property on the east coast. I have investors buy property from 60-100k, and cashflowing between $500-$1000/monthly depending on what they buy.
It's going to take you time to acquire properties, but with the amount you hypothetically have saved up, you could probably get up to about $10k in rental income buying smaller price point properties. You save the cashflow you make to keep pushing for more rentals until your cashflow outweighs your salary. Even still, I'd push further.
I agree with the other guys. Build your real estate business up slow and steady until you can switch to it full time, but to answer your question...
If I had 500K and wanted to make 300K a year in real estate, at a minimum, I'd get my real estate license. If you're crushing it, you can make 300K a year buying and selling housings. I think I'd then use the 500K to buy properties and open a management company managing them and other people's properties.
The problem is it's going to be hard to make 300K a year only starting with 500K. Maybe you could get into partnerships to better leverage the 500K into more properties. It'd take a tremendous amount of work, but some combination commissions and management fees could get you to 300K a year. Probably not year one, but eventually.