As @Bill Gulley (Billy, LOL) mentioned, consumer and homeowner loans are VERY heavily regulated.  

By not discussing active deals, taking time to have those dialogues to establish knowing your customer and determining suitability for these types of private placements, recording these conversations (CRM tool), its a process and important for the investor as well as the sponsor, which also helps support any future regulatory reviews.Lastly, I will note that the deals should be presented to investors from the issuer (key principals w/actual roles separate from mere marketing / selling the deals) or licensed reps of broker / dealers who can market these types of opportunities, take qualification exams and are heavily monitored, regulated.  

My advice to you will depend heavily on your local area.

I'm heavily invested in equity markets and have leftover cash flow from my 9-5 today as an engineer, and I'm thinking of diverting some of my monthly net into real estate rather than stocks.

They want jobs that mirror their passions so they tend to be heavily employed in the tech industry.

I'm heavily invested in Killeen and Copperas Cove (7 income properties) and I'm not concerned at all. 

The compounding wealth impact of that forced appreciation, cash flow, perpetual principle pay down (and long-term market appreciation, to a lesser extent) allow some investors to not have to worry or focus heavily on all the ....flations mentioned (it provides more freedom from those concerns or uncertain market forces).

But, the rest of us would do better to focus heavily on fixing huge problems, like cutting our housing and transportation budgets in half.Of course, cutting out spending in general on unnecessary things like lattes does help a little bit. 

In essence you are giving up all control and have to rely heavily on someone else to treat your property as if it was his own, which will never ever happen in a million years...When I hear people say, on BP, that their OOS is doing well, I am thinking half of them are probably clueless on what is really happening with their properties..

Denver is actually on my short list of cities that I plan to heavily research, I'd be very interested in hearing your experiences there as an investor.