Well you are in Virginia...and in Virginia an agent is required by law to have a buyer agency agreement with you before they can work with you.

If your asking these questions here, find a friend who can help so you don't get fleeced.Drawback is usually the loan is more expensive/higher rate, they may not report to credit agencies (won't improve your credit, but this can keep your documented DTI ratio lower which may be good) and if they do use a servicer, somebody (you, unless you negotiate otherwise) will pay a service fee to have your money processed every month.

The person either doesn't know how to read agency guidelines.

Think of this type of service as similar to a mainstream brokerage, with paperwork to do different things beyond stocks. 

Even collection agencies can't go after old debt if it has been ignored too long. 

There are lots of quantitative metrics ("mainstream" as you say) to observe here (P/E for the S&P - see chart below, margin levels, ratio of total market cap to GDP, etc), & anyone with access to google can see the same numbers.

You download a report in an easy spreadsheet with owner name, address, and all property detail. step 3 - scrub your list to remove duplicate owners, government agencies, anything out of ordinarystep 4 - "mail merge" list into your ready to go offer letter to purchase.

Now if you are not being represented by anyone and locate the property yourself, typically the selling agent will have an owner agree to dual agency and the agent can represent both sides.

A year or two later I contacted a short term(30 days+) rental agency and quizzed them on what I would get out of their service.

So many things that are commonplace today, were first made mainstream in that book (i.e.