They literally had me come up with $5000 extra 3 days before close and said the VP of finance simply made a mistake.Now I'm getting a $3500 sidewalk assessment. 

I had one friend who tried this and finally went to go visit the property and it had holes in the walls etc that the contractor never fixed but they did not know it until they visited

Here the agenda behind the prohibitive zoning is anti-gentrification which is merely going to result in disinvestment because developers are restricted on design and density and will simply invest elsewhere. https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/philadelphia/latest/ph...

That would put you between probably $3500-4500 depending on dp, property taxes etc. 85k salary, let’s say you are taking on home 60k, like even with house hacking, you’d simply at best be extremely house poor, at worst would be challenged to afford the mortgage, the vast majority of people buying homes in our area at this point in the cycle for a variety of reason are dual income households, tbh for a single person making 85k a year, you are just much better off renting or moving to locol area if remote or hybrid.

But it's not simply locating rich people.

If this is a large brokerage I would see if there is a better agent within that brokerage than the one you were simply handed when your previous agent left.

But the main reason I came back after the app was eliminated was to simply help people not make the same mistakes I did.It would be cool to somehow improve my knowledge, networking etc thogh.

If Eli operates his business correctly he will personally be fine and given the collateral is an FHA property the transactional costs simply don't justify the added transactional expenses if a risk analysis were run.

Ultimately a 1031 would have been the smartest move to buy another property and simply do a cash out refinance in 6 months to have access to some of the funds.

Like @William Collins said, there are opportunities out there but if you are too excited, you will overpay and then be stuck digging yourself out of the hole.