In the past, they have been late and on occasion are still late with rent payments. 

@Shan Cao Unfortunately it's a rare occasion we would represent a SFR transaction...just not our game.

Also on some occasions people leave the casements open and leave the home.

On occasion you can do better, but those get snapped up quickly.It's the early stages of buyer's market here, so I believe there is going more opportunities out there.You can get better CAP rates in other markets, but there is also a reason why for that, whether it's population growth (or lack of), economy, general desire to live there, etc.

I have had many occasions dealt with the homeowner directly on a listed house. 

Your one property will be at a disadvantage vs. a local owner that can have face to face meetings and is driving by a property on occasion and has multiple properties.

And we actually offer a bunch of portfolio products - on the RARE occasion that I do one, I take the exact same paperwork and submit it to a bunch of portfolio investors. 

Just stop telling yourself you can't and start reminding yourself you already are.Do you know what your reward is for being a sincere, honest guy, that listens, cares and takes one for the team on occasion?

They created an artificial sellers market as there is/was no way they could continue buying at that pace.I sold a number of properties (flips) to another hedge fund, AH4R, and they paid at least my asking, sometimes more (only one occasion where they offered less).IMO, this artificially inflated prices for retail buyers....

On multiple occasions, different speakers have somehow stumbled onto the topic of investors, flipping houses, “we buy houses†signs, and the like.