There are so many items that you'll find early, easily fix & extend useful life, by just devoting one weekend to several units, instead of letting them becoming major problems with major expense, which is usually when tenant and management notice.

If you are ready to make a medium size investment, spend $5,000-20,000 per month on marketing; manage a business operation, and devote full time + to that business, you may have success in building that business to profitability.  

I probably need to look for a less demanding W2 so I can enjoy the next ~5 years and have a little more time to devote to RE to determine if it's right for us, while still making a good income in case it's not.

I'm just not devoting enough time to getting everything rolling.

We are probably the only brokerage doing that.There is an entire field of economics devoted to irrational decision making.

RentEngine - is not a syndication-only provider, and the co-founder is not able to devote resources to making it a Rentlinx alternative.

This is where I'm at after a few months in this program (with unfortunately very demanding work hours and not enough time to devote to this business!)

If not, prepare for devoting tons of time to it in the beginning but eventually you can get some great tenants and have all your maintenance/systems in place, you will be ok!

They can not be expected to devote time to the process for free. 

@James Wise has a youtube chanel devoted to learning about the realities of inner city investing.