There are many sellers right now testing the waters with prices that typically don't make sense with today's rates.That being said, there is also a psychology behind pricing properties to create true interest and demand.  

Talks about the psychology of negotiating (you may be familiar with it.)

I do wonder if I leads to more inventory though, I have for instance another client that this 2.5% might be the difference in deciding to list or not, for sellers without a lot of equity that 2.5% can be the difference between writing and check or not, which in addition to some people not having the money to cut a check is also a huge psychological barrier, there are probably even some people on the margins who have in thier head they will only sell if they can net 100k in profit or some random number like that.

you are kind of dealing with three diffrent issues here, the thing about not being a legal three unit, super easy don't buy something that's not legal, and your agent really shouldn't be encouring you to break the law, the issues with properties being beat up, the vast majority of multi unit's that sell have some wear & tear that's often the reason for selling, being a tired landlord, if you want turn key, you are proably looking more single family homes or paying big dollars for a turn key multi if it even exists in your market, 3rd we can debate the pro's or con's of this this market but youve hired and agent and 99% of agents are going to tell you its a great time to buy, i'm usually more measured but that's because I have a deep psychological problem in which I care more about being intellectually honest than making money, most agent's however are not afflicted with this disease so your gonna have to make this decision for yourself before you hire any agent.

Having said that, my spouse and me work in high stress jobs and having some level of constant income coming from RE investments would be good psychologically if we want to take a break or lose our jobs.

While no cycle is exactly the same, they are fueled by the same human activities and psychology.

It ain't much and it wouldn't pay to repaint the room they stayed in, but the psychological effect is present and that works.

The plan to time the market loses to psychology and fear of loss.To your point, though, I would agree that for some people the liquidity of REITs is a good thing.

Psychology and sociology is paramount in this aspect. 3- The business of the business: This is things such as regulatory actions, licensures, the constant changing of such, how to navigate, contracts, documentations, process's and systems, etc etc.. 

You could get into technical sides of things, like how to imbed and track pixels from ads through to lead capture forms, email click through rates, A/B testing, open rates, conversion rates, lead acquisition costs, customer acquisition costs, headline/subject line writing, etc.On the persuasion side: The Catalyst by Jonah Berger, The Jolt Effect by Matthew Dixon, but there are also countless sales training, sales psychology, influence people, type books out there.