Most of them are not specialists in the way that youre thinking - they're retail employees with baseline knowledge of the products in that area.

Choosing your market is extremely important.. 

I've been looking at single family home prices and rental prices in Austin TX and its suburban areas, and it feels like it's extremely unrealistic to find something that passes the 2% rule.

Verifying last 2 years of rental history and income extremely important to find the “best of the worst”.Make sure you understand the Class of properties you are looking at and the corresponding results to expect.PM us if you’d like to discuss this logical approach in greater detail!

I understand dead money but with high interest rates and putting minimal money down or re-fying leaving 80% LTV the margins on SFR's is extremely tight. 

Quote from @Jason Hirko:Just to double check, because I know nothing about lending side, do you have any loan product for rehabbers where title insurance is not required?

Go to Etsy and search for "rental property tracker," and you will find hundreds of nice spreadsheets to track 10-20 rentals, usually for under $10.Software has extremely helpful features like online payments, marketing syndication (click a button, and your property is advertised on multiple sites), electronic document review/signing, maintenance tracking, and owner reports.

Orlando is very competitive, therefore you have to provide an extremely clean, themed out home with close proximity to the parks in a community that also offers great resort amenities. 

If the owner lives in town, you could even go knock on their door, I find this to be extremely successful when you are going after foreclosed properties.As to your 1st post, you might want to look at city data for growing markets, It looks like Rochester lost population last year, vs if you look at sunbelt cities like, Houston, DFW, Austin, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, these cities saw at a minimum 1% population increase.

I agree with this high level (Private Money = Individual, Hard Money = Company Non-Turnkey Product).I've been begging (mostly to no avail) for better clarity and definitions here for these to avoid confusion - BiggerPockets IMO has a HUGE opportunity to set and create the "gold standard" universal definitions of loan types with just a little initiative.