At this juncture I also am trying to narrow down and decide on one set of tools.

For $19 you will get a birds eye view.Thanks to BP I have narrowed my niche to a small point to focus on where I can have success.

Some have better quality schools than others, but there are properties that will cash flow, at some level, that list in those areas.As for realtors, yes...you can work with multiple agents, as long as you don't sign an exclusive right to represent buyer's agreement with any of them.My advice, narrow down your focus around the properties you are looking for...size, configuration, max purchase price, max rehab budget.  

Once we were 100% occupied the banks were willing to get serious, which we then narrowed down to 4-5 banks that were serious about us and our property.

I try to stay away from those with shady, unprofessional looking, unresponsive websites, and will likely ask for referrals once I've narrowed my list of prospects.

After a fair deal of digging around, I've narrowed my search primarily to Hurst, Watauga, Bedford, McKinney, and Garland.

@Jeff Plair yes, the right market is very important but I think the team on the ground that you assemble is even more important.A bad team in a great market will still produce less than satisfactory results vs. a great team in a average market will produce very favorable results.I would suggest narrowing the market choices down to a small few [I assume Indianapolis is on your radar?  

Getting a handle on the actual rent number to use is crucial at this point, so I will be working on narrowing that down to a reasonable range.

So, I narrowed down my REI choices to raw land and multi family homes.

That narrows down your request a bit, but still gives the contractor some leeway to work with the brands he typically carries.