I believe that any smart individual can be successful at virtually any level in Real Estate.

@Rachel Frazier love to meet for coffee and talk shop.   

Shop it through the different tunnels but make sure to do the numbers correctly for profit. 

We both have 740+ credit scores, one of us has a higher debt-to-income ratio,  but the other doesn't, we have a decent amount of capital between us, so qualifying for a loan in general isn't the challenge, we just want to be smart.

Most of the LAs I submitted offers to early on quickly shopped them and low and behold - that property that was vacant with no activity for months suddenly has a competing offer and sells for $100 more than I offered.

Patience and smart negotiating tactics.

The gentleman pulled out his smart phone, looked at it & said"It's  a two bedroom house.

Is this a normal policy and is it intended to prevent borrowers from easily shopping loan rates? 

So its been a busy four months for this one-man shop; but my wife has been a big help and is not working on reinstating her license.   

So if you wanted to go that route, you would have it shop around...but given you are 5 months in, like @Upen Patel said, you should probably wait.