Do not ask real estate agent to find you houses.It is like asking a starving lion to find you juicy fat rabbits. 

I'm sure there is some fat you can trim from your monthly expenses to fund your goal 

Owner financing I never thought it was possible, until I cam across two homes one was almost paid for the other had a small balance...Long story short, I got a good price on the one, with a 4% interest rate loan and the other believe it or not the price was pretty good and the interest was a big fat beautiful 0%, And this was a good home in a nice area, there is a God

I still need to get my server functioning properly, and add Php / mysql functionality...I've been ignoring the big fat face book.

GAMLS you have to pay an ongoing fee for instead of when a sale occurs like FMLS.With FMLS you still have to hit yearly minimum brokerage sales numbers or get hit with a big fee.What I learned from that experience is that many agents have a sense of entitlement.I would find that maybe only 20% to 30% of the agents would have a closing that month.So to scale this if I had 100 agents you might have 6,000 to 9,000 a month gross coming in.For that though it is a major headache.Many agents are part-time and rusty or an investor wants to run a hair brained scheme.My favorite is a new agent that just left a 50/50 brokerage that has almost zero training and wants to join my firm.They would want you to train them and spend hours and hours for a 300 trans fee.I am not even mentioning the amount of paperwork you have.Agents not keeping up with education requirements,not paying license fees and getting a lapsed license,getting a suspended license for child support, government loans,etc.Getting IRS orders to take any commission your agent gets and pay to them etc.I now have about 18 agents and haven't taken anymore for over a year.I do way better and make more working my own deals.Paperwork and headaches are less and I don't babysit have to constantly watch agents anymore.I would say it's good to have the brokerage license just don't add any agents unless you keep it small and they agree to a fat commission split for your time invested.If they him and haw kick them to the curb!!

Utilities are on in the duplex that is currently undergoing renovations.

A potential outlet for cheap gcs would be a pawn shop... but they wouldn't go this cheap.. maybe 80-85 cents on the dollar.... still a fat savings.

I have done classes in the past and any funds received was a minor reimbursment for my time, but I felt that the students received much more than I did.That said, my answer is also a Big Fat NO!

Our city has been undergoing major cosmetic changes, brought an NBA team in (who is now the second round of the playoffs - attendance for the SEASON was 99.7% of capacity).

It's around 1000 and you do it at home at your own pace....From my conversations with home inspectors, they have had to undergo a mentorship / apprenticeship by tagging along with a certified inspector for something like 100 home inspections.