How utterly amusing.Like any other business, REI is full of some of the smartest, competitive, well-connected and well-financed players in existence, who eat sleep and dream REI.You might just as easily 'dabble' in day trading, horse racing, Texas Hold-em or mixed martial arts.

The fed keeps bailing out weaker players.

As for non performing residential notes, well thats where most of the note players on BP play.  

With so many higher player!

I know there are many bigger players than me that probably did this with big tapes etc and made killings.

Move there and learn, get to know who the players are, and understand that area inside and out.

Outside of a few players, I see a lot of banks not interested in projects above 2M.

I have JV'd on a couple of NPNs and the returns honestly are not that much better since they are trying to get 20%-30% returns and the margins are getting squeezed with all of the new players trying to get in the market...just like flipping. 

I initially wrote "You should get educated on the basics of how real estate works... the players, representation, contract law..." then I realized you are a real estate broker.

The REIA is definitely the place to be to meet all the real players in the local market.