If I could recommend anything, I would say look into Michael Blank's blog and his website.

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.

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?

Real estate takes time and patience if you are staring from nothing like I did.

I wanted to start when I had only 5k Got pre approved and stared my search, took me 6 months, I looked at houses every day from craigslist to the mls. 

But what made me to take this risk and jump in, is exactly the feeling you probably get when you have to sit in a chair staring at a computer for 40+ hours a week.

__________________________________Print that and stare at it, especially if you are not there yet.

There are several "what do I do with $XXX" threads that have a bunch of ideas on how to make money in real estate if you're staring with significant cash.