I am a realtor in NSB/daytona area and if you ever want to meet I can walk you through what it takes to put a contract in, get preapproved and show you a closing statement(with names blanked out) to give an idea of additional costs you may not be aware of.

FSBO's happen all the time.. you simply take your contract that you can buy at the store.. fill it out   its fill in the blanks and go hand it to an escrow officer open escrow and they will do the rest.If your getting an appraisal means usually your getting a loan.. your lender will coordinate with the escrow officer.things you should do though1. get a full home inspection done that you pay for. and then negotiate any items that you deem necessary to be fixed.2. make sure you run the comps accurately.. many FSBO's are over priced by sellers that think THEIR property is special.  3. when you get the preliminary title report make an appointment with the escrow officer and have them walk you through it line by line.. so you fully understand what the state of your title is.. if this is lot and block subdivision stuff it should be pretty tidy.. also the lender will need tax's paid and be in first position so if there are any liens etc those will get handled by the title company out of the sellers proceeds.4. do not need agent to meet apprasiser and many frown on that these days lest the agents are steering the values.. although as @Kiersten Vance mentioned a top notch agent will have supporting documentation to support the listed price or the sales price.. to assist the appraiser. 5.

If you are a blank slate, you will need to have something tangible - preferably something that will still have legs if you mess-up a little - before folks will commit capital.A slightly alternate approach would be to find someone with that track record and convince them to take you along on a 2 - 3 deals giving you a chance to learn the details and build a portfolio of deal history.

I spent an 30 minutes staring blankly at my computer screen, trying to mentally refer back to what I had read in Brandon's book "The Book on No & Low Money Down Real Estate Investing". 

Any light on the Michael Blank approach to looking at loop net (he refers to them as dead deals), and using those to practice underwriting, and putting together sample deal packages to take to investors so they can see your ability to structure the deal?

But when you hear that there are a bunch of people on porches and they stare at you and agent does not feel safe to get out of the car... and that's at day time!

I know @Michael Blank has some experience in this.

Well, you fill in the blanks.

Then consider going back and filling in the blanks.

The upstairs is a 3-bedroom (very rare in our area) the bottom was recently a salon and needs updated to rent as a studio or 1-bed (no shower, no kitchen) however it's an open space that is a very cool "blank canvas".My real question is about LLC vs. personal for our situation, not really looking to nit-pick the KPI's, but feel free to comment on those as well...Based on 4 different lender scenarios available, the range for KPI's is below:Assume price of 175,0005-year ann.return 19-25 %CoC ROI 14-21 %Cash Flow 440-850 per monthEstimated investment to convert the lower unit:  $10,000 (but could be more if I cannot DIY as planned)My wife is the agent so she'll get commission of about $3,500Recent updates within last few years:  New furnace, new central a/c, new roof... without a formal inspection, I would consider the overall condition to be "good / very good" shape for being an old building.