Wholesalers give far less from what I’ve seen in practice and in “training.”  

You resort to the internet.

Crowdfunding is essentially old-school syndications that use newer regulations that allow them to market over the Internet. 

Quote from @Andy Port: I'm currently looking to take some money out of traditional investments and begin investing directly into real estate as a passive investor on syndicated deals.The internet is pretty much copy-paste with advice on how to access real estate and defaults to saying "Just invest in a REIT - its the same" except you pay for the entire pool of existing properties (even if they have low yields in less opportunistic areas), the entire management team's multi-million dollar salary and their private jet, etc...

I wish we could nail the fake pump and dump due diligence PML that infect the internet in the same manner as this.

You are on the internet too much and not talking to real-life real estate investors enough.

The internet and video calls make the world pretty small! 

Much of the federal land out here in the west is used as range land for ranchers, oil and gas extraction, logging, mining, military training, recreation and conservation areas, etc. so it's not like it's not being used.

What is not talked about as people are embarrased to is how many are losing money from these guru trainings vs. how many make $.  

@Sanil Subhash Chandra Bose I agree with your general train of thought.