BNI has been a big help in my other business and BNI is heavily saturated with real estate professionals and other related fields (commercial lenders to landscaping to roofers, etc.)  

Thank you everyone for your input, i am heavily leaning toward not doing it.. just in my heart i want to help them out. 

My current game plan is to look heavily into Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin (may be priced out of Austin).

Also, I like to have a full understanding of every market that I invest in and be involved in the acquisition process, it would be tough to be heavily involved buying far away and I'd have to fully rely/trust the person I'm working with.

I am a fairly new agent still learning the ropes and while looking at the MLS data for my area for turnover rates, all the peak turnover areas around me are HEAVILY farmed already, but i found 2 that had great turnover numbers for over 5+ years compared to other areas and not one single agent in the area had more than 10% of the sales, but when i drove out to see the areas i found out quickly that both are gated communities with no soliciting signs everywhere... 

Generally, on real estate transactional work, this is not big, but on commercial deals, the title company is generally much more heavily involved, so that is huge.

It's going to depend heavily on your local laws. 

One reason why I considered West Michigan is due to my family being heavily involved in the construction industry.  

There are lenders who rely heavily on your last 3 years of returns.

It gets folded in with a bunch of "Fannie - No Overlay" deals that include marginal credit, heavily leveraged real estate investors, down payment assistance, DTI that barely works, et cetera.