With that being said I am on the hunt to find a mentor who can invest some knowledge and skills in exchange for  a FREE secretary, assistance, rehab assistance, handy-girl whatever needs to get done  at this point in your career you need help for FREE.  

It all comes down to your experience, and ability to schedule and organize the project, subs, materials, etc. 

Today I am preparing and organizing to get ready to shoot them over the lease to have it signed tonight and I notice something one of the paystubs for the company looks very weird. 

Where I live, only people who own hotels can join the organization.

Many of the successful agents around my town have a small area they market:  Garage sales, events, host open houses in that area, get their name out there with flyers, etc.My growth has been more organic.  

Most lenders know that something bad will happen - that's the nature of the biz - so they are usually not only looking at the deal and the ability to pay back the loan but also about the skills of the operator to get out of difficult times. 

Whether you're best at finding great deals, funding projects, or rehabbing, I'd love to find out how our skills and resources could compliment each other.

Your instinct may have been pretty good so far but only by pure luck not skill.

Yes, there are risks to investing local, all investments have risk, but at least there you have some control to correct your mistakes and learn hands on from them.As for the CAP example ... yes of course there are more factors that were not covered in the simplified example, some to the advantage of the high CAP market and some to the advantage of the low CAP market ... text books could be written on all those differences, but the point is that a skilled local operator can select a property and investment strategy to make lots of money in either type of market ... just because there is a low CAP rate does not mean your total profits will be lower, just like having a high CAP rate is of no assurance that your profits will be high.

As an active investment, it is the investor's knowledge, skill, and hard work that maximizes returns and mitigates risks.