Its never going to work if you want to buy in the low income areas of a city and hire management from outside.

This is within one year after I hired them.

In the process of analyzing deals, I reached out a property manager for his fees.

@Phil SheltonYou would need a civil engineer to provide a drawing to get submitted to zoning and get a permit if it passes zoning is most common This also depends on the road - if it’s a state road forget it as it will take a year to get approved and cost a fortune - if it’s a local road process not as cumbersome but don’t expect this to happen quicklyIn some instances you may have to prepare sight distances etc to make sure it’s safe to add a curb cut

I like to be busy and feel I am pretty handy so my wife and I did all the work ourselves for the exception of hiring out carpet install and dry wall for the bathroom. 

I have a list of about 20 properties from him, I just don't know how to start to the assessing process.  

In this case the Service of Process will be easy but once they have moved on, you'll then likely need to hire a skip tracer to locate them.

They’ve just been telling me it’s been processing with Underwriting for three months now.

My credit got negatively affected but we’re in the process of building hers ( she had no credit nor bad credit) I think we’ll have her credit above say a 700 in the next 6-12 months.

As far as whether to approach them with or without an agent - approaching them directly without an agent can save the seller probably 2.5-3% of fees, which give you some room to negotiate on the price, but you need to be confident that you are capable of evaluating the property value, estimating on the amount of work that is needed, knowing how to negotiate/ structure the deal, and navigating the closing process.