They exist now either to soften the blow of living in a nice area and then later taking your equity and moving onto something else, or as in the aforementioned Palisades Park example, letting a close knit family live side by side in an affordable fashion.

Otherwise you'd have to do it the old fashion way and start building your own credit.  

Advantages for investor, usually they can go in deals at lower minimums and create a mutual fund type of investments across geographies and niches.If you feel you or your partners are fairly connected to capital and you have a good market, deal and experienced team, I personally like the old fashioned capital raise bypassing any middleman.  

I'm just saying the old fashioned way works great if no one is home regardless of the lock.

OLD FASHION CALLING I THINK PHONE SKILL ARE VITAL...MOST OF MY DEAL CLOSED OVER PHONE STUDY THE PHONE

Many agents are old fashion, so there's an opportunity there. 

THE GOOD OLD FASHION PHONE....LEARN IT.STUDY IT ,  LIKE I HAVE AND WHEN YOU PUT  THAT PHONE DOWN....

EDIT TO ADD: I probably would have left in a dramatic fashion like that though!  

I would appreciate the opporunity to get hands on involvement and learnt he old fashion way. 

You never really know when fatigue starts to set in for the owner but in those moments when property taxes are due, a buyer has backed out, etc. where is some of the good ol' fashioned "I just want this property out of my life!"