As you've already observed, when you buy a $500k property and finance at 50% LTV to rent for $2,800/month, your Cash on cash is abysmal.

From my observations its usually the individuals offering mentorship or coaching who teach this because its the easiest way to show success and justify their fees despite the students winding up with lousy assets. 

Most would charge about 800 to $1k to do the observation.

We can see what the market thinks by observing transaction volume in real estate private equity.

What market trends are you observing in your area?

Your observations about how VAs can be treated by others are totally accurate and very unfortunate. 

Ok, here's 2 observations of his system with clients:will county Sheriff sale.

Whether is taking his "course", paying for the self written articles about his success or aka writing "puff pieces", buying fake Instagram followers, sitting on FB marketplace trying to get someone to pay for a house they don't know is condemnable and pay to have DJ remodel it and DJ never completing the remodel,  him spending an enormous time defending himself in small claims court, and threatening charges on  people that don't know law so they pay what he wants.All of those examples came from either my observation, experience, or other peoples reviews of him.The guy rented me a condemnable property.

I observed a similar scam but less money involved. 

I attended a boot camp once kind of as an observer (because I will not be trying active syndication anytime soon).