Spam link in the OP aside, real estate can be a great accelerator towards FI, or a great hindrance, depending on if it's done right, or wrong.
I haven't been on the same continent as my real estate holdings in the last seven months, yet they continue to send me cash flows every month.
Sometimes I deal with issues (yesterday got a text from a tenant the oven wasn't working--handyman was going over to trim trees anyways, checked and needs a new control panel--better to replace than repair, at this point, ordered a new one on Home Depot's website, should be delivered and installed in a few days. Total time: 2 minutes texting, 5 minutes ordering online), but I could turn it over to my property manager if I didn't want to (it just pays something on the order of $500/hour to DIY at this point, since everything's set up already), and at some point I will (and have, for about half my properties).
There's drawbacks, of course, but there's also many benefits (such as a much more stable than a "SWR" via less sequence of returns risk/rent volatility).
I feel like a lot of people think they don't want RE in ER, because of the "work" it will take, but I spend more time tax loss harvesting and rebalancing than I do on my managed real estate. Setting it up properly is key, of course.