Hello Sean, I am in the central NJ area as well; I am looking at buying distressed properties in Plainfield NJ area, fixing it up and selling it; There seems to be quite a lot of competition in the area !

However, because it's a competitive, animal-related, "fun" job, the pay is pretty low.  

They’ll be on the market forever because no seller or realtor will want to work with a bank’s meticulous underwriting when there are other competitive buyers with less stringent lenders.

I'm in very competitive market and I'd like to put down less than 20%.

A real estate broker, for the purposes of this article, is defined to be a person, firm or corporation who, for a fee, commission or other valuable consideration, or by reason of a promise or reasonable expectation thereof, lists for sale, sells, exchanges, buys or rents, or offers or attempts to negotiate a sale, exchange, purchase or rental of real estate or an interest therein, or collects or offers or attempts to collect rent for the use of real estate or solicits for prospective purchasers or assists or directs in the procuring of prospects or the negotiation or closing of any transaction which does or is contemplated to result in the sale, exchange, leasing, renting or auctioning of any real estate or negotiates, or offers or attempts or agrees to negotiate a loan secured or to be secured by mortgage or other encumbrance upon or transfer of any real estate for others, or any person who, for pecuniary gain or expectation of pecuniary gain conducts a public or private competitive sale of lands or any interest in lands.

With competition very tight, I can help you get more deals in escrow. 

Perfect answer from @Andrew Michael.Market better than your competition.

However, it is still quite fractional to the price with land! 

Maybe I need to educate myself better to gain more confidence, but it seems to be the least forgiving on a misstep especially in an expensive and competitive market like San Diego...

The team/agent community is highly competitive and if they were lying there would literally be hundreds of complaints from other teams to the real estate commission from these.Also the top teams are typically listed by a number of different reporting agencies such as realtrends, the wall Street journal etc.