Alas my tale of success will have to wait and in the spirit of honesty and reality I present my tale of hubris and bungling.I'll start with the moral of the story which is do your due diligence.

I typically purchase through agents I've established relationships with.I'm usually in and out of my office during the day, and to be really honest, I have a LOT of down time.

It sounds like she knows what you're doing, so you're ahead on the honesty front. 

In all honesty I feel like if you get a really good deal the cash buyers will find you.

But I have accepted deals with their initial counter because it gave me a spread.For example, the bank stated they would do an internal BPO if I countered, and to be honest I thought the internal BPO would come in higher than the external.

I am a little nervous to do that to be honest. I

But in all honesty, I really want to do my own thing (just like you mentioned)

i almost did. i had a roof leak and shingles were bad. i called them and they said my deductible was $2500 and it would have cost much less to fix. so i didn't do it. to be honest, i dont like a deductible that high. it means that besides a catastrophic incident, i'd not file a claim for anything else. even a burned kitchen might not be worth it.the other thing i didn't like is that it took a few calls to understand what the process is. i had to talk to the manager since i was not getting a call back from the agent i had worked with.

Either way you need to operate with honesty and integrity and look to serve others by helping them solve their problem and not try to take advantage of anyone.

Well in all honesty both could be true.