Also the majority of the owners we negotiate with are not professional real estate investors, so they often prefer discussing sales price in terms of "price per pad", as opposed to cap rates and GOI/NOI.

These are professionals with additional training and a stricter code of ethics.

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

I literally photographed and videoed my first property on Friday evening! 

These are young professionals who probably dropped 200k on an MIT education and you think they are suddenly going to destroy their credit and ability to rent in the area where all of the jobs in their related field are because they can't come up with rent?

Anyone have any contacts or are themselves real estate professionals in this area?

That's why many brokerages offer sales training to new agents.Second, there are a lot of good resources out there for new agents in the forms of articles, books and (I'm certain they must exist) Youtube videos.

The weekend we spent seeing properties and network with other real estate professionals versus hanging out with our friends.

Sure there's some expense and paperwork involved, but that's the cost of doing business as a professional.

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