Investing in real estate is not a kid’s job. It is done with extra caution. Lots of ideas and recommendation are taken before actually investing. Since last 50 years real estate has been the hottest area to invest in. however it’s much more complex than stocks and bonds. There are great chances to get huge profit. But it is a tough job.

If you are a land lord and has bought the house by taking the loan you should be cautious before demanding for rent. You can ask for rent on the basis of expenses. You can also add the profit in the rent. But it is always advisable to not include this in the rent unless and until your mortgage is paid back. Once you are free with mortgage, you are free.

You can sometime end up with bad tenant who harms your property. In this case you can suffer from negative cash flow.  And still you have to pay the loan. You can sometime end up with no tenant.
As far as rental property is considered the buyer looks for the place which is in high demand and the people searching for rental estate is more. They search for a place where the number of tenable=nets searching for the property is more and there is scarcity of rental property.

If you don’t want to suffer as landlord then you can be a part of real estate investment group. The company looks after the whole property. They are responsible for interviewing the tenants. They are responsible for maintenance. In return the company takes a part of the monthly rent.

There is also a category of real estate trader. They are a bit different from buy and sell landlords. Real estate traders intentionally take the property for shorter period of time not more than 4 to 5 months and then sell it at higher price. This technique is called flipping. This type of flippers does not spend any money in maintenance. They don’t even keep enough money for paying back mortgage.
There is a type of flipping expert who buy the property at reasonable rate, have some renovation done and then sell it at higher price.

A recent survey organized by New York welfare society, most of the real estate deal ends up with profit. Surprisingly last year the percentage of real estates deal which saw loss was only 3%. This statistics clearly suggest how dominant this field is.