Real estate investing is far from easy, many people would say.

Buying a property and hoping to re-sell it quickly at a gain isn’t a workable scenario in the current business climate.

If you’re looking for long-term appreciation, you can buy a property. You need to purchase it at a reasonable price to allow room to pay for management fees. Or you can manage it yourself. The tenants are the wild card, aren’t they?

In commercial real estate, you run the risk of not having any tenants, if the local market is glutted. And that is the case in many local markets. In residential real estate, you may find yourself doing a fair amount of maintenance. You may worry about finding the right tenant. How do you create a lease? How do you screen tenants so as to find the ones who will stay a long time and keep up your property for you?

A real-estate investment trust (REIT) is the real hands-free alternative. You simply purchase shares in a publicly traded fund that owns property, often commercial property, and possibly mortgages. When the stock market goes up, these funds tend to go down, and vice versa. This helps balance your holdings.

But the fund fees can siphon off your profits. What if you want a simple, low-risk long-term investment ? One where you can file the deed in your safe deposit box?

Here’s a proposition to consider: an assisted investment where you are given a choice of new single-family houses for rental from low-cost local markets. You can also take advantage of negotiated contracts with reliable property managers, insurers, and loans at 5 to 10 percent down.

Using such a system, You can set up an investment with known costs, and then let the tenants pay off the mortgage for you. It’s a great way to start a college fund for your young child. All you will have to do is sell the house in 15 years and extract the equity.