If you're lucky enough to find an interested seller, you will need to have the tools to quickly analyze the deal, understand if the sellers motivation to sell, pain points if any, and genuinely see if you can provide them with a quick exit strategy.

Let's face it, his business is incredibly Guru-ish.

There are ways to deal with these situations, and it depends on the property and the lien holder, but it's possible to do some pretty incredible things if you are willing to invest a little more in legal costs to close the gap on your losses.  

In that case an agent would need some motivation to lower a commission.

Set filters for: as-is, fixer upper, 203k, handyman, motivated, negotiable, TLC, cash, etc.

I'm sorry to hear about the water damage situation at your duplex; that must be incredibly stressful, especially as a rental property investor.

Hi Noah, congratulations on having an incredible vision at a young age.

Because the chances of cold calling someone and finding a deal is already pretty insanely slim to none, but those odds get 10x worse when you attempt to call someone who has already gone out of their way to let the world know that they don't want to be called.In fact in many ways an investor calling me is fairly insulting when you stop and analyze the potential reasons this investor thinks I am a motivated seller willing to let my properties go cheaply.  

My husband is incredibly handy and loves reno’s (he will lose sleep from the excitement of finishing a project).

The IRS still doesn't like "short term" 1031s, with good reason - you need to ensure that you can 100% support that it was not a flip.This was not uncommon during 2020-2022 when prices were increasing at an incredible rate, I did have a few clients where they acquired a property that was truly intended to be a rental property, had a long history of buy / renovate / hold rentals, and then the market just blew up so fast that it changed the investment analysis for that property, or in several cases they actually just received unsolicited offers that they couldn't refuse.