Bring a general contractor with you to the property and let them teach you how to identify problems and opportunities for improvement to bring the property to its full value.Go down to Home Depot and other individual wholesale materials stores and get a list of prices for everything you might use on this flip and every future flip.Go to the professionals desk at Home Depot and ask about discounts for bulk items purchased.It takes practice and a lot of trial and error at first to perfect the techniques to estimate costs.

Also please forgive the many spelling and grammatical errors. 

Denise welcome to BP, Great community here for sure, I'm a rookie myself.

I'm a rookie and willing to learn from any mentors who have time to teach the ropes for me.

I may be in error using "all", please excuse that.Absolutely a wholesaler can act professionally, with integrity, deal honestly, in good faith, with valid contracts and fair valuations, but they aren't if they simply tell a seller they are  buying, then chase off looking for areal buyer, assign the contract with their hand out!

NOt work on it for 10 days waste your time and especially contractors looking at deals that can't close.I know its frustrating. and out on the east coast were title I susually done at the end of the transactions I make them run it day one.. you should see the stares I get back.. ( hey why are you doing that ) for the exact same reason you just stated.I had my first resi deal in Calistoga cira 1975 and worked on that got ready to close 45 days into only to find out same circumstance you did.. now talk about a  bumbed out rookie 18 YO agent ..

Make sure that the big numbers make sense and that you have a little room for error and just buy the darn place.

Error

There is no room for error here as you can get wiped out with a single bid if you are not careful.I do not mean to scare anyone out there I just think that for new investors there are much safer ways to get in the game. 

If you have a pile of investable cash burning a hole in your pocket and don't have the experience or knowledge to separate an investable deal from one that isn't, or how to operate that deal after acquisition, then you are better off keeping that money in your pocket (or your friend's pocket as the case may be) at least until you are educated enough to do this and/or the market cools to where there is a bit more margin for error (and profit).