The one nice thing about that group is that there seems to be a variety of meetup types, some general, some very focused on a specific skill or area, but all different days of the week so a crazy schedule like mine doesn’t need to keep you away from meetings or activities.

It sounds like you have run into one of the fairly uneducated variety.

Note that the presentation is totally custom, therefore the data can be pulled from the back end and leveraged in a variety of ways.

I think there are a bunch of "good" publications that can offer a variety of facts and data driven thoughts / forecasts.

What most have said (including me) is that a 2008-style collapse is unlikely given a variety of factors.

Someone who has gone through a variety of transactions, has a team of real estate professionals, and can offer their knowledge in the REI side of the industry to assist you in purchasing decisions. 

Exact ROI can be tricky to calculate I believe because RE ROI incorporates a variety of factors such as purchase price, rehab, loan pay down, appreciation, cash flow, exit strategy etc.  

Section 8 covers a wide variety of people.

In short, I've developed relationships with a wide variety of people to accomplish tasks.

So I feel the best step would be to locate a variety of lenders and show your success with the first property.