For example, I was talking to a banker friend of mine that did the underwriting for the last apartment building I bought. 

For example if you mail 500 letters to owners, you may get between 10-40 calls and it may take talking to 30 sellers to close a deal.

to me it does not seem like a good deal, unless you can talk him down to around 50k-60k

I'm looking forward to talking with all of you.

When you're talking about sub 4% interest, that's a huge amount.

I was just talking to my lender, and there was a big change with the amount that you can put down with a Fannie or Freddie loan.

Talking face to face is much more effective and there are not a lot of investors doing this as it can be a very cumbersome activity.As far as having a hard time finding PM's and GC's go... most of the bad PM's have been run off or put out of business, but many investors expect their PM's to do everything for free and don't want to spend any money in maintaining and protecting their properties and keeping their tenants happy.

You should check out the latest BP Podcast with @Steve Garner as he talks about using this method.https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/bp-podcast-193finding-managing-rental-properties-working-full-time-steve-garner/

In the mean time, I would like to talk to an agents opinion about a particular neighborhood I am interested in wholesaling.

I would talk to several lenders.