They usually aren't any good at vetting a seller financed transaction and representing your interests from a legal perspective.  

Installment sale in particular might be helpful from a tax perspective depending on your situation.

There are so many perspectives. 

I am reading several books that seem to be popular/recommended - of course, I believe they were written by the creator of this website, so naturally they would be recommended by this website - and I am trying to decipher whether they are universal principles or things that worked at that particular time for that particular individual.As far as @Henry Clark 's suggestion that I narrow my focus to exactly what I can do now - I appreciate that perspective and will not bang my head against the wall about this topic.

It was great to read everyone's perspective on the situation.

From an appreciation perspective, over the long-term I don't think one will necessarily outperform the other by a significant margin.

I'm very interested to hear everyones perspective on this.

these are those situations you hear about in the podcasts and the books that advertise starting with zero money.So, looking at it from a loan officer's perspective, if you come to me with your experience and your credit and the asset's number's work, then you should be able to get a 90%/100% program on a bridge loan which means you are in for 10% of purchase price for entire project cost. 

Thanks for sharing a fun and interesting perspective.

The east side is enticing from a pricing perspective but it is extremely rough.I would also highly recommend adding Detroit to your list of potential markets.