Our arrangement changed to me getting a commission for each deal done.In the mean time, she opened her library to me and I started soaking in all the timeless principles of buying right.

You are missing the most important thing you can buy yourself,an education.You need to meet with professional wholesalers who have been doing this successfully for some time and ask them how they do it.Apprentice yourself to them for free doing their ground pounding work learning the business as a young college student intern would.Learn how to put together a large list of cash buyers and flippers who need the properties you find to sell them.Learn how to carve out a good territory to farm that has several homes sold in the last two years for top dollar prices and sold the fastest (less than 30 days).Learn how to use postal workers,utilities people,and others to spot bad houses that might be able to be bought cheap.Use high school students involved in sports teams or band to seed your farm with cards and fliers door to door at every property and give them a tax deductible donation to their groups.Promise them a bigger wad of cash if you sell a house they bird dog for you(tax deduction!).

Yeah it might be tough at first securing seed capital, finding a property, negotiating a pricing, and fixing it up, but once you have a rental with reliable tenants, can you get to a point where you have a passive income type setting.

I've replaced some subfloor due to really bad urine soaked boards, the Kilz / Bin primer so use your best judgement on that.. 

I am completely new to real estate investing (this is my first post actually) so I am soaking up all the educational content I can get.

The flipper saved $500 on the roof, 2 years later I have to tear it off and replace it with a membrane, plus take the soaking drywall down an deal with that mess.

I live in Minneapolis Minnesota and I want to soak in as much tips and advice as I can before jumping the gun.

I mean there are some glaring obvious issues standing out like a full rotted and soaked wall, broken windows etc. 

Plus, he probably brought weed seeds from other houses on his mower, and there was a big bermuda grass infestation.

You got to start from the seed, to get to the root, to get to the fruit.