The problems in my opinion maybe the fear of identity theft or there pulling your leg and cant afford the property.

It was a large Hispanic community with the chairs out on the patio with people conversing and enjoying a nice afternoon....the clothes drying on the clothesline.

A really slick operator might train someone off odesk to do this leg work and produce spreadsheets with data...

but you never know when you get lucky and hit one.. out here on the west coast its basically illegal to do this .. but its state specific.to put it in context before the laws were changed.we did a lot of this work.I had 3 teams of two each  Man and women each team.. we door knocked EVERY NOD in our 4 county market  2 million metro.. this was a few hundred doors a week... with all of that leg work this led to one to 2 deals a MONTH> they were usually pretty good as I would not buy anything that I could not make a nice spread on.. sometimes we got a few more than 2 but not often .. this was just another arrow in our quiver.. direct mail in this instance was a waste of time and money.also speaking with them more than 10 days out of the sale date was fruitless. 

But I suspect he might have had a leg to stand on if he demanded his EM back in this situation. 

I let them do the leg work and then if they actually do the leg work, then I do my own due diligence.

A boiler unit and 4 water heaters are on their last leg.

If he didn't complete the work and is multiple weeks behind and missing budget with no real explanation, it is difficult to understand what leg he can stand on thus he is just a bunch of idle threats.  

I honestly think we as agents are going to get fed up with working to provide a faceless entity like Zillow, Trulia, etc. the information they use to charge other REALTORs an arm, leg, and firstborn child!

A prominent real estate investor in California related a story to me yesterday that nearly knocked me off my chair.