There are literally thousands of real estate deals available across the United States and they come in every size, shape and variety. Finding the one that offers the right reward to risk ratio can be a daunting challenge but there are definitely real estate deals that produce outsized returns versus the risk for the savvy and patient investor. Still, not all lenders recognize an excellent investment and investors are confronted with another problem, finding reliable and affordable real estate investment loans.

Real estate investments can be lucrative, especially if you are purchasing properties with significant upside. Measuring how much you make can be challenging, though, since investing in property has a number of different models for valuing your return. Ultimately, there are three key metrics that will help you understand quick-flip investments, long-term cashflow plays, and combined investments that span both increasing value and collecting longer-term cashflow. 

Real Estate has created more millionaires and billionaires than any other investment vehicle. While the world of real estate investing is full of successful people from Donald Trump to the even more successful Donald Bren, this dog-eat-dog world is also littered with millions of also-rans and bankrupt players. The successful real estate investor must understand the qualities that separate the successes from the failures. Here are some of the more important traits:

In general, real estate investing offers two interesting alternatives, active and passive investing. The active investor purchases, rehabilitates and then rents or resells a property. This process can be extremely rewarding financially but carries a significant amount of risk as the buyer can lose his entire investment if the property does not perform up to expectations.

Most real estate investors start the process by deciding what kind of investors they want to be. One traditional path to investing in real estate is to buy properties, fix them up and resell them. While this can be lucrative, it is also very time-intensive and can be risky. There is another path, though. Instead of being the owner, why not invest in first trust deeds? You can invest in real estate by providing money at generous rates of return to the people that get their hands dirty.