In addition helping other is also a key ingredient in success.

You appear to have the key ingredients for success, energy, enthusiasm and the ability to act and take risks.

Mark Updegraff - If you get a job at BiggerPockets or become an investor in the company, I'd be happy to provide the ingredients to the special sauce, but otherwise, we're going to keep that close to the vest so as to avoid what happened with the last system.

I think you are forgetting some key ingredients here.

Finding a neighborhood where you feel comfortable working with clientele that fit your personality is an ingredient to success for any type of real estate investing endeavor. 

Numbers can be massaged and inflated - you need to know what ingredients went into the recipe to know whether or not you want to eat it.Anyway, it looks like a lot of the finer points have already been made here, just thought I'd throw my two TK cents into the fray.All the best to you all, investors, providers, and skeptics alike!

If you do your homework right and things don’t head south, selling and paying taxes rarely makes sense.Austin had the right ingredients in place for a long time, even prior to 2004 when I began buying there.

That is a cardinal sin.You should look at marketing the same way you look at the contents of a fruit salad.In a fruit salad if the only ingredient in the bowl were apple slices one would have a hard time calling it a fruit salad and only those who liked apples would enjoy the presentation.

Large anchor employers is another key ingredient to look for when you are looking to deploy your investment capital.  

There are 3 ingredients to a successful direct mail campaign:1) A highly targeted motivated seller mailing list (absentee, probate, pre-foreclosures are some examples);2) A well crafted letter that appeals to your motivated seller and makes that seller call you; and3) A follow up system (send several letters and when they call and if they've shown some motivation, follow them up until they sell their house to you or someone else)The above is what happened and what I've learned in my real estate business.