What I find is that the banks just want too much money for houses that need too much rehab.Is there some way other investors are getting access to properties that aren't on the MLS, or these common sites I mentioned? 

As soon as you bring someone else in (bank, HML, etc) it gets more complicated as you need to answer to them, pay them interest, and likely provide lots of documentation.

If you want to do it on your own you will need to use those sorts of sites.

BiggerPockets is a great site to get started learning about real estate investing.

It seems like a decent prospect for appreciation and cashflow since it's situated between JHU and Penn Station and is the site of a fairly substantial development project (Telesis), but I understand the strength of the deal will be determined by what price and condition I acquire the property at. 

In our discussion he is ready to sell that house and then he tells me he has 25 properties (I had already seen that on the Tax Assessors site) and he said he would like to sell all of the properties.

just a couple of reasons:No one can buy ALL the deals themselves.Many monetization feeds on a highly ranked site (book sales, pro membership, etc) Trust through notoriety can have a high return on investment (see M.I/oceanpointe for negative example)None of these are good or bad in and of themselves.

DFW is a wonderful area and BP is a great site to get all of your questions answered. 

He has some on his site that he recommends.

Hey Vanessa, I know this is a small thing but you can get a lot of contracts from the BP site under the tools tab!