Typically 4 units and under will fall under residential guidelines, and loan decisions will be driven off of your income / credit more so than property performance.

My wholesale connections here in Ca. have driven the costs so high now that they aren't as good a source as far as I can tell.  

I have sent out a handful of hand written yellow letters to houses I have driven by but that is about it.

Additionally, I started to look at things using a little more of a data driven approach (i.e. population trends, economic growth, etc.) which opened me up to much more affordable, yet further away markets.

From our website:Poor screening often results in lost rents, legal & court costs and costly damages.Screening of applicants includes the following:Full credit/eviction/criminal checks are done, instead of score-driven reportsVerification of rental history includes validation of actual property owner to avoid fraudVerification of stability of income & employment via YTD paystubs & W-2(s) (analyzed to confirm not fakes)Income is calculated 3 ways to spot stability anomalies: pay period, YTD average and YTD + W-2 average.Debt-to-income analysis (more accurate than traditional 3x rent requirement)Bank statement to see if NSF issues, if deposits support income, prove MoveIn Funds, also analyzed for unusual transactions.Pet screeningHolding Fee required from approved applicants to make sure they are serious, before your property is marked pending.

I'm a cash buyer but I don't think I've ever called on one of these signs (and I've driven by a ton of them).If I were you I'd spend an afternoon looking at every house that's for sale in your area and every home recently sold in your area, and pick out the ones that were obviously flips.

Thank you all for the sage advice, really didn't expect such overwhelming advice I am glad I decided to use BP as a sounding board as you all have really driven home the path I should take one that deed down in my gut I knew I should be taking.

In our tech-driven world and so many self-service real estate search engines,  don't think changing listing agent makes that much difference on the marketing side, as long as it has nice photos in the MLS listing, access to the house is provided (no schedule for showings), and the listing agent is responsive to offers and inquiries.  

My realtor's explanation was that the prices are market driven, blah, blah.

The note business as far as supply will be driven by your local market.