With inventory more scarce in the Midwest and Northeast, sellers there have less competition for their listed homes.

Using the bidding system it forces competition which is the essence of a free market and keeps pricing down. 

Plus, syndicating often no longer makes me competitive because of all the fixed expenses (like creating the PPM, the LLC, and generating tax docs).So, for those small deals, I’ve simply had people (2-4 people) lend directly to my LLC, backed by the deal in chunks of ~$50K.

We had competition and they had bucks.

Yet, the current market conditions in Australia (especially Perth) are proving to be incredibly competitive.

But competition and demand hasn't declined.Happy to talk more if you're looking in the Detroit area.

as U get experience to be competitive you need to be able to run the numbers in your head or on a napkin forget about calculators.. :)175 pprehab  30kcontingency 5k at least 6 month hold  depends on how much your putting down but lets figure 10k there.buyers in this price point almost always need seller assist on financing so 5k there.and then 7% sales commish250K X .93 =  232k  - 50k  has you at net loss of 18k.. 

How will you differentiate yourself from the competition when you have little/no experience?

This is a needle in a haystack and generally comes with competition and valuation premium, as well as lost opportunity and memory making costs.. 

As competition in this space cools down, the remaining players who stick it out and new players who enter the asset class will have the greatest chance of being the next class of top performers.