I understand everything said above and the sentiment people feel. 

Your sentiments are reasonable. 

I agree with that sentiment - I have seen a property go to sheriff sale where Wells Fargo was the lender for a first position, and trustee on the second position.

I generally agree with the sentiment that the Portland real estate market and others may not feel like bubbles due to a general trend of livability/demand + constrained supply.

I know that this is a personal flaw and that I should go for it if it makes sense to me after doing my own research, however, I can't help but think that it may not work out the way I believe it could based on all of the negative sentiment I have received from family and friends.

I know some of the sentiment around here is to just get your marketing pieces in the mail, but I'd like to do some level of testing to see what works before significantly ramping up my direct mail campaigns.Finally, the main reason we are doing this is our thought process was that Listsource is available to any Tom, Dick or Harry out there whereas our list would be complied ourselves and target obviously distressed properties.

I had no idea such anti success sentiment lived in this forum.

These capital raisers' sentiment is, "Well, so long as I'm a part of the GP, it's legal.

I echo everybody’s sentiment.  

But this happens to coincide with research that I've read indicating that historically, in any given year, the odds of a recession are ~25% (usually due to Fed adjustments of the rate - outside of clear over grown bubbles like the dot.com or previous housing bubble)BiggerPocket just echoed your sentiment on the CA > OR movement, I'd be surprised if that slowed in the short term.As far as the big companies, overall that appears strong, but as an FYI from the hospitals perspective (for whom I work for) - there are no expansion plans that I'm aware of, and we're a long ways from any job growth due to ACA.