If you hang around the real estate investing community for any amount of time, you are going to hear a lot about investing through syndications.

Just hang up, and move on. 

Instead you're going to have a whole lot of inventory just get removed from the market or never make to market in the first place, and the owners will either remain in their 3.5% homes or they'll find ways to hang on to the home in the meantime, such as turning short term rentals into long term rentals (I saw this when I was looking in Four Corners, where a lot of the vacation homes had been turned into rentals while the owners waited for property values to recover).

The cost of getting your license is pretty standard but hanging your license at a sponsoring brokerage with the various commission splits, office fees or flat fee structure is different from location to location.

Hang in there. 

We also have a bucket of "approved hanging devices", a small hammer and a picture measuring and leveling device that we loan them for one month.

@Damein White go there and hang out at a Home Depot, 6am Saturday morning to find hard working ones.

I am sure there are many paths to get to your goal but one thing I certainly suggest, is hang out with people who are doing what you want to do. 

If you want to find real estate borrowers, got to where real estate borrowers hang out.

I haven't really said much just been hanging back and trying to learn but now I am tying to take some action.