Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

In my area, when looking at most of the pictures of properties on the market, they look professionally photographed.

The housing stock that I get sent via two realtor MLS portals set up against my criteria has appears to have more potential for straight cashflow rental than true BRRR because the markets don't justify the investment in the homes i.e. you can sink money in but the rent levels dont change much and the value of the property is still limited by the local market. ...it's easy to fall into overdeveloping. 

These are young professionals who probably dropped 200k on an MIT education and you think they are suddenly going to destroy their credit and ability to rent in the area where all of the jobs in their related field are because they can't come up with rent?

How true is this?

Anyone have any contacts or are themselves real estate professionals in this area?

I think that depending on your brokerage's location that can be something to try.Trying to convert FSBOs to listings is another tried and true method of getting clients/listings, it's not easy but you can have some success with enough effort.

Forbes has a habit of putting something like this out every few years.The "bad" thing about investing your IRA in real estate is that the main Wall Street players do not have control over your funds and the means to earn commissions selling financial instruments.His arguments are entirely tilted towards to negative and not providing any context or perspective.I could just as easily pick 3 or 4 historically bad stock investments (Enron) or high fee annuities, and make it sound like that was all that you could expect if you went to a conventional brokerage - which is clearly not the case.For someone who understands real estate as an asset class, there is the potential to have your IRA produce consistent returns and have true diversification away from the news-cycle volatility of conventional financial products.

Half of the stories are likely true, but we still evict them. 

The weekend we spent seeing properties and network with other real estate professionals versus hanging out with our friends.