Beyond a certain critical, mass, the gains are exponential. 

Do you have another source of income that is stable and increasing, or likely to be for however long you have in working years remaining?

This is where the big guys with $$ to pull many lists and do the mash up can cut through where no budget small timers have trouble getting calls and deals.Best method to find motivated sellers is always:   Door knocking run down looking houses, FSBO sign out front, from a list of 30-60-90 days late on mortgage list.Google:  30-60-90 days late leadsI just bought 1000 leads from citricato, around $0.35/ea which is cheap vs other sources.No simple source of late on real estate taxes so I subbed to Tom DiAngostino's tax lien system, just to mail the late on tax info in his system.  

Hopefully I can one day become self employed and make REI my main source of income. 

Before I drive into this aspect, I want to increase my funding by looking for a new job opportunity that will allow me to have another source of income as well as pick up some more relatable knowledge and experience in this field of RE.

There is a bit of a point you need to get to where you get a critical mass and it makes it all a little less stressful. 

Expanding further on $3 million plus condos in Houston,...the fastest one to sell via public sources was in 303 days, the 2nd fastest at 447 days, and the longest at 972 days with the others falling in between the last 2 numbers.

I'm beginning to believe this was naive, but I was hoping to turn real estate investments into my single source of income.  

Thanks for all of the feedback, a couple of people have asked for more details so I will provide them below, I've also put out some calls to local banks and mortgage brokers and as soon as I'm done compiling the responses I'll post so others in a similar situation can see the results.I have two properties with which to leverage but the challenge I'm finding out is that since they are both sub 100k properties the banks do not like to lend funds on properties in the sub 100k market, the mortgage broker is currently sourcing rates for banks willing to lend on properties sub 100k.

It may vary depending on the source of capital and the deal itself.