If you find a high quality PM, they'll be worth their weight in gold and can truly make your investment passive. 

I'd recommend at least a $250 non refundable pet deposit, depending on the size of the unit you might consider a weight restriction, I don't have one but sometimes they make sense. 

Not even the 80/20 rule with realtors, more like the 97/3 rule in my experience.A good realtor, better yet a good realtor that is also a good RE investor, is worth their weight in gold.

They clearly put too much weight on them and they ripped away from the wall.

I have talked with several brokers who have explained that road access, water access, well depth requirements, building laws exc. influence value the most but I am having a harder time ascribing weights to these variables. 

I would be getting crushed under the weight of this game.And I'm not even talking here about the importance of building the close relationships I have with my main contractors.

Due to his body weight, apparently the next step gave away, so he was essentially stuck in the staircase, unable to extricate himself. 

My problem is my buyer's list is heavily weighted with full-time investors, and in order to make a profit I would need to find the people that want to buy a nice, new house in a good school district for around a 1% rent to purchase ratio (i.e. people with extra cash looking to put it into real estate for retirement purposes).

Anyone out there that can help me network with some heavy-weight and seasoned investors in the valley, I would be very grateful.

I'll be working to increase my stock, bond, REIT and note allocation over the coming years, so that my allocation isn't so heavily weighted towards real estate (the opposite of your situation).