We've had an agent cost us $10K because he spent too much time reading his own press and did not know when to get out of his, and our, way.  

You will be very hard pressed to get a loan officer to budget you for PTI (payment to income).

You can screen the animal but pressing for more is likely to get you in hot water.

And, for now I am holding off the press.

I really like the legal self help book from Nolo Press.

Barring a generous relative or acquaintance/friend, you are going to be very very hard pressed finding a hard money lender that will let you roll all those things into the loan to someone with only 1k in the bank.There are some lenders (recasa) that will roll it all into the loan so you literally go to the table with nothing.

The person making the offer would be hard pressed to get a counter and more likely a response several days later stating they rejected your offer.

I suggest you check out the books by Nolo Press.

In my town (as in most towns) there are depressed areas where people do live, but you would be hard-pressed to find any real estate investors at work in those areas, buying and flipping, etc. 

For someone without a lot of capital and for someone that hasn’t networked the way I should be I haven’t been able to press forward with anything.