What happened to make the deals become total losses to the LPs?

Don't spend your time with other agents as a focus. 

Consult with competent legal counsel to guide you regardless of your choice here.

Anyone have success with Propwire?

At the same time, I’ve been seeing a lot of distressed properties sitting because owners don’t want to deal with the process—permits, contractors, tenants, refis, all that.

The lender that you were working with isn't funding deals. 

But to sum up your truly relevant point, all you are really saying is that there is high default risk when you deal with people who have poor credit history or some other financial issues.

Would love to connect and help you with finding some on/off market deals and introducing you to property managers.

The US Government and the States have but one way to deal with this, taxes.

Personally, If I could pull out a HELOC, I would use it to fix and flip which will typically make sense as you shouldnt be keeping the money out for that long and you can recycle it or pay it back and build off the capital that you got from. the flip.