Here are the qualities you really need.

I think the two biggest things that usually thwart a real estate investing career are stress and slander. These are, at least, my two biggest challenges. When I say slander, I really mean vilification. I want to be the good guy. I want to be fair. I want to be proud of what I do. However, in this business, you regularly run into conflict.

I recently had a situation with a contractor whom I hired to do a midsize drywall job. The short version of the story is the project went bad. After about two weeks into a one-week job, he was still not done, and he demanded to be paid more than double our contract amount. In essence, he unilaterally changed our fixed, firm contract into a time-and-materials contract.