Real Estate - Good or Bad?

I was wondering what everyone's thought was about real estate investing in general as well as the specific outlook right now. Have you had good or bad experiences? What was your specific investment process... did you buy property to rent out, or did you buy property to fix-up and resell, or did you do something completely different?

What do you think... rates are going up, the housing market will cool off. Buy a property now (say a duplex), do some minor fix-up work and get it ready to rent. When people stop buying because the rates are too high and rentals become more popular, you'll be ready to go. Make sense: yes or no?

You don't want to have a property sitting idle with no rent coming in, and you don't want to rent out a property for less than your mortgage payment. Have you heard of people who live in a house for 2 years and then move to a new house and rent out their old one? There is some deal there with refinancing and not paying capital gains tax if you lived in a house for 2+ years I believe. Does anyone have more information on this?

Has anyone done any foreclosure investing? If so, when do you get involved... when the property owners are first notified, when the bank takes possession, some other time? What are the pluses and deltas/minuses of foreclosure investing?

Real Estate is the single best investment out there... just ask Donald Trump, Dolf Deroos, and Rich Dad's Robert Kiyosaki to name a few. Has anyone gone through one of these "experts" courses? Has anyone had success following one of these courses?