Oh we should start a 'Realtor's nightmares" thread. I could tell a few of those stories myself. I used to live in Brownwood and know exactly what you mean about lake property. I had one really good agent friend that lived at the lake, and I lived in town. So we sent all our referrals back and forth to just each other. If they wanted to see property in town, she'd send to me and if lake property I'd send to her. Then we paid each other referral fees that were very reasonable. It's sure pays when you find another trustworthy agent to work a mutal partnership deal like that.
I've never sold forclosurers like you Debk, but I was a HUD certified broker and did do one or two of those sales. We just never had many of them in the areas I lived in.
And Texicon, I had one of those relative deals too - they assured me they did not want their Realtor relative having anything to do with the deal --- then after I spent hours and much gas showing them around, they bought one I found for them using that relative and cutting me out altogether. I learned that lesson the hard way. You were wise to refuse showing them.
I do work with a lot of Realtors now, but we usually pay cash for everything we buy so it's very clean and easy work. We have a lot in South Texas near Houston (Katy, Victoria, etc). I'll sure contact you if we do anything near you. Mostly industrial yards are what we do, it's a well service and drilling company. As for traveling, with email and digital cameras I don't really have to / get to travel much. Usually our local manager will find the property through local Realtors, and then send in one or two that he's looking at to me for review. Once it's to the point of writing a contract or actually putting a lease together, then they turn it over to me to finalize with the local Realtor. Then I do the usual with the title company, surveyor, etc to put it all together and close. A big part of my job is compliling reports for the CEO & CFO with company-wide rent projections, capital budget expenditures, etc to give them an overall picture of real property. That's why the sudden desire to go back for the MBA.