What your agent considers to be a fine neighborhood may not be what you would consider the same.

@Sonya C.if you have an LLC and own investment properties (operate) outside of the incorporated state then you may need to file a LLC tax return in each of those States even if the LLC is a Single Member LLC and disregarded for Federal tax purposes. 

They have in house salesmen but they also let independent agents called Brokers sell them as well because you can never have enough people selling your products.So, the way you combat that is call a bunch of places. 

I’ve probably looked at 200-300+ deals (wholesaler deals, agent deal, on market, etc) and all of them either lose money or break even.

I'm a US Navy Vet turned real estate agent in the NKY/Cincy area!

Ask your agent/contractors for a referral engineer.

Many are lucky to make 5k to 10k per deal, and that's usually a decent amount below what a typical agent commisison would be, plus usually the buyers are paying all the closing costs. 

Neither do agents.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

Got myself connected with local agent, local property manager, and even learned some of the local politics during my visits.