The other thing I see all the time are the people who've been researching and reaching for months if not years and still have yet to do anything......All I can say is you will never learn from a book what real life experience can teach you.....its those who fail and never try again who truly fail...not those who keep going and try again.  

I came across a bank that lends up to 130% of the Kelly Blue Book value (credit score dependent of course). 6.

Having said that, I've been booked up for months in advance and had something come up that was an emergency or just a friend in need, and slid them into my schedule if it was something small.

A couple of my favorite books on commercial real estate that I recommend are: - Complete Guide to Buying and Selling Apt Buildings by Steve Berges- Commercial Real Estate Investing by Dolf DeRoos (this was the equivalent of Rich Dad Poor Dad for me with commercial real estate) 

I'm listening to the BP Podcasts and reading books at the moment.  

BP member J Scott has a book called the book on flipping houses and you get his other book for free called the book on estimating rehab costs which sounds like the one you would want.

Scott's "The Book on Flipping Houses" and "The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs".

You may want to decide between the more steady buy and hold or the faster pace flip to help pick a property and strategy...perhaps a full flip book like those on BP if that is the course and I have some low cost or free (at library) books on landlording if that is the next stop,in journey (see the blog post "classics of lanldord lit" on my profile)...BP has calculators for both strategies....

So far real estate has been good to me; considering the fact that I have done everything in the book you are not supposed to do when I first started.  

Personally I love travel, hiking, biking, tennis and reading a good book.