It almost goes without saying that real estate is an excellent investment. But many property investors miss an entire class of opportunities. Many of them focus exclusively on the equity side of the business. By doing this, though, they're ignoring where the money actually sits in real estate -- on the debt side. You can participate in this part of the market by being a trust deed investor and making loans secured by trust deeds. Here are some of the benefits of trust deed investing:

Figuring out how to flip a house today is a much easier process than in the past. After all, buyers are back in many markets and prices are either stable or, in many places, increasing. However, with prices going up and debt still hard to source, the market is not without challenges. Here is a process that can help you figure out not only how to flip a house but also choose which one to flip.

Finding affordable and readily available investment funds for real estate deals can be a daunting and unrewarding task. The vast majority of traditional lending institutions are bound by government regulations and internal oversight committees.

These days, the newspapers, online financial forums and other news outlets are full of stories about Ponzi schemes, fake investment deals and other sorts of scams. While many of the schemes involved high-tech companies or convoluted financial vehicles, the real estate world was not immune and many investors lost sizable amounts of money to real estate investment scams.