I've been studying the market and believe I'd be pretty decent at evaluating a loan.

You have No Credit, not enough Rent, want to study Real Estate Investing when you need to concentrate on your JOB and working up your licenses or skills to do what you are doing to make more Money and you have a big family.

It is easy to prove every deal to be not good enough by just going a little higher in every category. 

Some things that helped me when I started were picking a market, learning about the different neighborhoods in that market, and studying sales comparables for 1-4 units in those neighborhoods on Zillow.Establish a criteria of what a good deal looks like, and what a bad deal is.

This is the real world and I hope the kind of newbies who surf from trend to trend believing REI is just another easy get rich quick gig, they will study real world scenarios like this.  

IF your goal is to become a millionaire, Dave Ramsey indicates he has done the biggest study of them and they don't talk about how they leveraged "cheap money" to obtain a great ROI. 

Do a comprehensive market study to locate areas that are likely to appreciate in value and have a positive cash flow from rentals.

I'm not opposed to proving I'm a real person by showing a government issued picture ID, but I am against giving an agent a copy of my driver's license or passport to keep on file.

Security deposits can be used but you need to prove that they were responsible, that there is a problem and lastly prove out costs related to the amount being withheld.

I told a newbie just this thing, with no experience, no study, no knowledge how would you recognize a great deal?