You tied up 70k and a minimum of 6 months just to go through this process. 

Many borrowers think they can “cut out” the middleman (mortgage or loan broker), save some upfront “points” and fees, and go direct to a lender.  

Many companies will be lazy/cut costs after they have a large enough customer base.Currently Dataskip.io is the best. 

A huge number of properties we have looked at would have issues on this front.It can lead to an opportunity to improve the value of a property if you can buy it with an illegal area, get that area legalised and then sell on with a higher value that the bank would lend against, but it's not clear cut and it seems though that there are almost two levels of 'legalisation' - we were able to register all of the annex on the plans and could fully incorporate a portion of it but there is another portion that is too close to the back boundary wall that should only be used for things like storage and not ever for habitation. 2) During the purchase process be careful, amongst other issues with this property we had the situation where the seller's lawyer was not actually a lawyer (having been struck off).

Should I just hire a tree service to clear a path and cut the dead tree?

Expenses directly tied to a deal that was pursued but not completed (e.g., inspection fees) are considered part of your investment activities and can be deducted as a capital loss in the year they were incurred.

We’re looking at a seven-figure property in Texas, tied to a non-performing loan.

I am not sure if it was just my market or more on their end but at the end it was a pretty big loss for us, so we cut it. 

It takes actual thought and a programmer's mind to be able to build a CRM into something that's actually effective (sure a basic person could setup a phased text message or email automation, but it's tying everything together with opportunities, automated campaign re-entry/follow-up, social media integrations/automations, etc that is the real value).

Are most of those gurus just selling courses/cutting a fee on top of an agent?