My coworker gets his emails on a regular basis and his website strikes me more of a sales pitch than a mentor, though he's a heavy investor in my area.  

I don’t see how in the future when he gets a regular job we could avoid this and we would be back in that 20% tax bracket for gains. 

Since I am full time employee with my regular Buyer job (not real estate filed), I did not want to be a full time agent relying on constantly working leads and wasting time with first time homebuyers ( in my opinion).

With the regular single family home buyer you have to deal with emotional purchases.  

If you bought at a discount because of poor condition, then do a rehab, you might even get all that you paid for the property with the increase in value.You'll get regular investment property interest rates which will range from 4.375% to 5.2%. it's really pretty simple.

You will be better served to re establish your personal credit.In order to start rebuilding credit, the most pressing time-sensitive matter is to establish long-term open lines with good payment history as soon as possible.Open a secured credit card with a limit of 4x of a regularly recurring bill - cell phone, water bill, etc.

So I would go to the county recorders regularly and research the NOD lists and then start knocking on doors. 

If I'd gotten them at regular price I would have paid $200+, but I only spent $50 for two awesome lamps!

Absentees are THE best pool to hit on a regular basis - we mail to them monthly.  

Dealing with students is a whole different animal than regular families.