Due to the confusion on their end and their slow response, it's costing me more money than if I just went directly with the vendor from the start.

Investing in real estate in actually starting, managing, and marketing a company. 

It won't take much money to purchase something that makes sense.Use the remaining money to invest long-distance.

Yes, they are actually selling individual units as well

I was wondering if anyone has these same issues in their market, and how they've been able to skirt the mania and actually find real serious deals.

I had no idea they would decline me for MY OWN MONEY technically.   

I see you are located in Royal Oak, that is the area we've actually been looking at as I'll be based in Warren at the Arsenal. 

Nobody ever went broke over a duplex, I know this now,  but I have to admit I had some serious doubts about this when I started 16 years ago, I bought every course I could find, already on CD's, this was post cassette tapes lol, and I paid RichDad Education for a one year coaching program (turned out my coach was a girl in a call center without any actual experience). 

Good luck to you and I hope you achieve all your goals in lif I actually understand perfectly.  

What would you do in my shoes I don’t invest there so take this with a slight grain of salt but I’ve heard multiple stories of basically this exact scenario someone getting offered a big payday for something in Cumberland, rejecting it & always for some reason (house burned down, block got worse, sheetz decided they actually didn’t want someone’s land for a car wash after all) always selling for like 10-20k and regretting not selling.