Dan, this is a great practical example of what I always advise people to do - figure out how to get into the rooms where you are the only person there who knows anything about real estate.It's totally pointless to be in a room full of other real estate investors who are also looking for money for deals.You want to be in a room full of people with money and no competition from other real estate guys.So, skip the REI and BP meetings and join the country club or the local Chamber of Commerce or a BNI group.  

It's become very obvious you don't care for facts, you decided this thread must be an echo-chamber of your feelings, and that is it.

I used to run a Chamber of Commerce in a town with all these same infrastructure challenges.

Their allies in the media try to cast these groups as neutral third parties when, in fact, they are card-carrying members of the liberal echo chamber.

Maybe you don't like different viewpoints on this forum and would like to start a members only echo chamber for yourself to confirm your biases.How am I not successful in Real Estate? 

Thank goodness that people like you have stepped out of the BP echo chamber and shined more light on CF, which is more multivaried that many people are led to believe.

One of our more recent clients did a LOT of due diligence on us before purchasing a property, and that included all of the following: Speaking to 3 of our other clientsCalling the local police departmentCalling the local news stationResearching the local school district and chamber of commerceSpeaking at length to our Client Specialist (I think it was probably 6 hours on the phone total).Talking to some of our other business contactsAsking about us on BiggerPocketsI always encourage everyone to dig deep.

@Jackie Comitino when I was going to move out of state, I would contact each cities chamber of commerce.

@Joe Splitrock for the encouragement and for being so darn reasonable all the time@Mindy Jensen for expert local insight, knowledge, and mediation skills @Bill F. for getting me out of my echo-chamber and teaching me how to "win every argument"@Jim K.for somehow managing to mix things like Greek mythology and McRibs into otherwise boring real estate talk.

—ABC Detroit wxyz.com•“Detroit has recovered, and the region’s future looks bright”—Detroit Regional Chamber•“Last year, Detroit saw the largest year-over-year gain for educational attainment since the recession, with an increase of 1.2%.”—2018-2019 State of the region report•“The city is now one of the hottest national markets for stadiums, office, retail, residential, industrial, restaurants, and mixed-use development.