In the future, we aim to get into fixer-uppers, development, etc., but for now, we like to only consider semi-stabilized (with minimal deferred maintenance) or fully stabilized, cash-flowing properties. 

However, you have to invest in specific communities where they are encouraging development.

Now I own a thriving property management business, run a real estate team helping other investors learn how to grow and scale their portfolios, I have my own modest investment portfolio and have two development projects going at the moment.

Finding, developing and maintaining a 'brand' is hard and time consuming work.Let me turn the question around; As a seller, why should someone pick one agent over another.

Like I brokered a 22  lot development of duplex's for a builder and just charged him 30k flat fee per sale.. they sold for 225k each back in 05 when I did this and I sold them all in one weekend at a big event i paid for in San Jose CA.. all to CA investors it was my fly and buy program I did in those days..

Eventually you'll start developing relationships with people in the market that will bring you off market deals, but they have to believe that you can close the deal.

He's also the developer and this is the first house in Phase II of this development.

Over time, we have developed systems to handle these situations as effectively as possible.

But, all of the areas around there are starting to develop as well. 

That is just not realistic in this current market.So in my opinion it's important to expose yourself to a large number of deals, so you can develop an intuitive sense of what's reasonable and what's not (and quickly discard the ones that aren't).And it's true that there is no way to 100% protect from fraud (and not just in passive real estate investments but even in public stocks etc.).