Newbie-What did I do wrong?

[James Bitakis]

I am a newbie to real estate investing.

On Oct. 4, I saw a new property come up, (no picture, but I was able to see it using google street view).  I called a local Realtor and made the 50min. trek to the property.  The address on Realtor.com and the Realtor himself said the listing was 7436, but when I got to the place it showed 7430.  I called the Realtor up who was trying to get a hold of the listing agent, but he was not able to reach them.  He said that he left voice mails, emailed them, etc. to try to get me into the property.  The property looked vacant.  I had to leave the area after an hour of him unsuccessfully trying to get a hold of the listing agent.  I told him that on Oct. 6 I could be back down there to see the property and that he should've gotten a hold of the listing agent by then.  

Oct. 6, he texts me in the morning that the listing agent finally got back to him saying a contract was accepted. I met the Realtor later to look at a few other properties and got the listing of this house that I "lost out on", and the listing shows that it went on the MLS on 9/30. But I saw it first on 10/4 (from both Realtor.com and another Realtor's automated listings). I am not really sure how if it came on the MLS on 9/30, I didn't see it until 10/4 from both an automated listings that was being sent to me daily and also on realtor.com.

I'm wondering if when I went down there on 10/4, that I should have gone DIRECTLY to the listing agent's office to see the property when my Realtor couldn't get in touch with them.  

What do you all think?  I did go driving for dollars and found 2 properties that I am going to send letters to the owners so it wasn't a complete waste of time.