However, there is another player in this epic saga - payment constraints.

There are a lot of great options out there; aside from providing the basics (ie. listing tool to get the property published to 10+ major sites, scheduling tool to schedule viewings, tenant screening with comprehensive applications which include nationwide criminal background checks + credit checks + eviction history, digital lease creation tool, rent collection tool, and maintenance tracking tool), some services also offer your tenants additional capabilities which makes it an easier sell on your end when getting them to transition over (ie. their ability to report on-time rent payments to the credit bureaus; this can create an added incentive for making sure they pay that rent on time).

Big players are starting to making significant moves.  

We would produce in-depth reports on major players at big companies that looked at not only their finances, but also the repetitional risk to the bank (negative news, etc).Randy

There are a lot of bigger turnkey players right here on Bigger Pockets that are very well known.

Educating yourself on the local market, styles of homes, house hacking strategies, and lending options to buy your first place are some of the things you can do now that cost nothing.Check our Craig curelops book called the househacking strategy and Brandon and heather turners book on the managing rental property.I Househack here with my wife, our second, and we try to double dip by also making improvements within our capability to the property while we live there.  

@Jonathan Davis The answer to your question starts and ends with understanding your own drivers, desires, capabilities, and objectives. 

Perhaps I’m not giving myself enough credit for what I am capable of, but I’m working diligently on the two rehabs now and learning as I go (luckily I bought great deals with massive margins of safety on those).

I also could see that what it needed matched up fairly well with what I was capable of. 

Maybe it needs to be blended with other strategies.I sort of think of a sponsor of a syndicate as an arbitrage player.