.- My Resources / Constraints: I'm in a by no means unique, but perhaps less common situation for those getting started; I'm a somewhat senior software engineer at a tech megacorp and should be able to save a couple of down payments per year for lower priced houses (100-200 in my area), or perhaps one medium priced house (300-500).

Hello BP,I've been working as a Gov contractor providing Cloud Engineer services for a while, but my true passion is commercial real estate.

The buyers had a structural engineer inspect and then asked for another $60k reduction to stabilize the foundation.

I bet the rate of Engineers going homeless is all but 0. 

I am an engineer so I am very used to Excel.

You can determine what a decent salary would be for someone in your market and then reverse-engineer to see if what you're paying as a salary, plus the projected performance commission, will get you there.

I am not your structural engineer so take what I say (and others most likely) with a grain of salt and best to get a contractor to come take a look at it.

Youtube is the second largest search engine, and has videos on basically every subject known to man.

Lawyers, engineer, architect, expeditor, surveyors, etc pile on the fees quickly. 

@Ryan LudwickStart your real estate investment journey by leveraging engineering skills to analyze markets, spot trends, and build a team.