We are working with a MLO who said we would be getting a conventional loan to start and 2 days before closing told us the house isnt livable and wont be approved for that loan "which we told him before all this but he insisted it would".

Also if the property is in poor condition agent could be assuming that no bank would offer traditional financing on the property and therefore wont consider any offers with a financing contingency.

Investors were beating first time home buyers but once U moved up to homes that make zero sense to rent NUMBERS wise that changes back to a normal market.Where I see this in the reverse in is low value real estate markets were low value to me is anything at 150k and under.. they can flip flop go either way.. and investor dollars have propped up the market by purchasing what would have been 20 to 30 years ago homes that were only sold for owner occ purposes.. you pull investors out of some markets and they would revert to the mean. and what i mean by that is prices would crash hard.. as homeowners wont buy C D areas generally becasue of crime schools etc.. those values are propped up by rents and investors paying for a given cash flow.. and out of area investors especially.. what you think works  Say 1% rule or greater an out of area person may think .05 is just great.

Occasionally a property get destroyed by fire.

Every offer we have put in, gets outbid by 30-60k over asking and we wont settle for any other area unfortunately. 

I so want to just jump in, but I'm afraid that one wrong decision will completely destroy my desire to invest.

I have always been self employed real estate broker nothing is better than that once you get a book of referral business my wife who has 30 years at it. knocks down 150 to 200k a year spending exactly ZERO on marketing all referral but their is lean years getting there.. you don't risk anything .. other than the 10k a year for her broker and 2k for MLS.. its by far the most profitable small business out there.. some talk about wholesaling but if U don't have 50 to 300k a year for marketing you wont make any big money. 

I like this as machines wont fill up with coins or we dont have to worry about machine break-ins in the laundry room.

The usual Fannie /Freddie loans wont lend to you unless you are actually running the store yourself.

If you utilize the VA loan you wont need much money down ;)Good luck to you.