I also don't really want to pay $3K (I saw one such course) for educational materials that may simply be available for free or may not even be that valuable. 

The payments would simply be part of your debt to income ratio when calculating how large a loan you can get. 

Depending on the disclosures the buyer made for the sale of your home there might not be anything wrong .Perhaps the contract had an assignable clause or he advertised will be sold after closing.The agent might appear to not  be ethical but is simply selling a home for a higher price that is under contract  The fact that he did not cancel your contract might allow you to keep the emd or demand the buyer to perform  

I simply let them known that I’m not interested in renting, however I would like to talk about purchasing their property.

[I mostly want the experience and I would be willing to take a smaller cut on the pie]3) Oddly enough the agent just text me and tells me that this is owned by the bank and there will be an auction for the property this Wednesday 11/22/17.

They are required to do their own reporting so we need to simply keep receipts

If you are self managing I’d say not much changes you simply use the software yourself.

is simply: Refinance conventionally.

most likely this will have to go through the process and end up with OREO broker who then lists it for sale.. trying to find a national lender and buying one house from them is next to impossible.. they simply will not deal with one asset.

Or do you just simply tell your tenants to send in the rent by the 1st of the month and leave it at that?