It could be a bank, or a hedge fund, or a bond, or the US government, or a credit union, or an individual, or a LLC, or a corp, etc... 

Is your property manager just a licensed individual, or are you working with a company?

Friends, family, individual lenders, and have them put down most of the purchase and Reno funds.

One does not need to be a licensed individual if they are leasing properties out for an employer on an hourly or salaried basis.

It's as much a function of opportunity cost as it is simply looking at an individual asset's performance.$1000 rent is $12000 annual with $4k - $6K in Taxes and insurance

@Lucas MilburnIndividuals with self directed Individual Retirenent Funds allows individuals to invest those funds in numerous investments tools with one being real estate.  

@Matthew Gallacher well I have spoken to an individual out of state who inherited a house in 2015, it's vacant and has one of the red and white Xs on it and she is interested in selling it.

(to name a few):- RealBlocks (https://www.realblocks.com/), only for accredited investors, allows for secondary liquidity from P2P token exchanges for fractions of individual CRE properties- BuildingBits (https://buildingbits.com/), for both non-accredited and accredited investors, $100 minimum investing in individual CRE properties- Jointer (https://www.jointer.io/), for both accredited and non-accredited investors, allows you to tokenize your property by creating a land-trust and allowing Jointer to purchase equity in your property in exchange for cash (financed by token holders/investors who are debt financing at an interest rate equal to a CRE index), while you continue to manage your property and split cash-flow and appreciation profits with Jointer.

If it's still too much, just reach out to people on BP and meet up with them individually for coffee or a drink. 

It is best to establish a relationship with an agency you trust and then work with them on your individual properties.