I encourage those I work with to deal honestly.  

Multifamily is recovering and as rates start to slightly come down more multifamily deals are being reviewed.

And, yes, there are years of data points to validate that just within my office, tens of thousands of dollars of wasted appraisal and inspection fees for deals (mostly not mine, thankfully) that had 0.00% of going anywhere but the "Loan Application Declined" bin. 

Must have tools: you need some type of evaluation metric and/or tool that you are comfortable with and are willing to walk about from a deal if it doesn't meet your requirements.also, a deal is a term for a transaction, not to be confused with a "good deal".

Yes you partner with them on the individual deal but you get the reps in to become better at watching a deal from start to finish. 

@Michael Magno Just closed a deal in Baltimore and familiar with the area.

can you layout your typical transaction with these folks its unclear from your post how these were set up.. are you a borrower and they are the first position lender on flip deals ???

Without more info this sounds like a less than optimal deal.

I work in engagement marketing and deal with construction tradesmen all day, usually more custom type tradespersons with a lot of care and concern for their own work, which may glamorize it more than I realize.

BP has various tools to help you analyze your deals (rentals, flips, wholesale, etc). : https://www.biggerpockets.com/investment-calculators7.