Or I could suck it up and create a brand new website on WordPress for $1000 and then not have to pay more than $10 a month for the web hosting. 

The investor would buy an ugly black box that produced money if it was the right price.

Quote from @Saquan Johnson: I would reach out to local rehabbers in that area and also higher-producing agents to get this info.

Do you believe it will now be more cost effective to hold a license or do you believe the expenses will go up with what I assume will be a flight from the business by low producing real estate agents? 

You could also go work as a buyers agent on a top producers team and do closings that way.

You can find it through the MNREIA web site or email me if you have any troubles.Type @ and the first few letters of a person's name to link.

Is the portal a downloaded application or is it a web portal?

There are a lot of great resources here and around the web for people looking to invest in Birmingham.

Because of the additional income I am producing through the consulting business, I am afforded the opportunity to invest money in real estate.  

I have some web design skills (I'm an engineer, so easy to learn new programming languages) and I'm currently testing my new system to manage the tenants.