(As a caveat, my home market is Lexington, not Louisville, so perhaps my perceptions are skewed a bit. 

I wrote a blog on the realities of SEC vs the perceptions people have. 

I am stating that there could be the perception that the buyer ends up even more nervous (especially a first time homebuyer) By using some type of representation (your cousin), he get's to get his home on the market and in the face of thousands of realtors, who have ten's of thousands of buyers, which is significantly more than your cousin would have gotten from listing (and selling for that matter) on his own.

The only one rebuttal I would have is about the absence of "white sandy beaches" not sure if this is a relative perception matter but all our island formations are formed from coral and other calcium carbonate materials.

@Nate Soufan As real estate is moving more towards a virtual investing model and people prefer being contacted virtually than in person (no door to door,) I suggest marketing keeping that in consideration.Also people's perceptions are different.

They are making an effort to change the perception.

It's YOUR property and curb appeal at stake here, and IMO the LL should do this.I did for my rentals, as "Their perception of good enough never matched mine", and moaning month-after-month just destroys the relationship.Years ago I rented and the contract did not address the issue, but the LL moaned about it. 

Too much importance placed on that ole 'college degree'.....pounded into people's heads since birth, parental pressure, peer pressure, societal pressure.....Imagine in some cases that the student used that money to start a business....not only paying down the debt but making money at the same time.

I don't necessarily have empirical data to show the number of investors that want to invest passively, but I have been talking to and working with investors going on 11 years now and my perception is that passive investors far outnumber active investors.When you see all of the demand for Turnkey product, it is easy to realize that if you are willing to work hard and develop a quality, service company, you can enter that market and get a piece of that demand.  

The market's perception of whether the general area will grow, shrink, or stay flat over time will determine if investors feel that a capital appreciation/depreciation component should be buillt in as well.I'm sure folks on here can give you their general cap rate guidelines for each quality tier.