Hi I am a first time buyer with hopes of becoming a buy and hold investor in the future and I am contemplating making an offer on a Duplex that fits all my needs as a family man but from the numbers I ran it won't cash flow (while I live there).

I got my license about a year ago to help with purchasing my own SFRs but so far had neither sold anything nor worked as a buyer's agent.

that's where you want to go hunting.

Obviously, it kind of sucks for us to discover foundation issues but a smart seller I would imagine realizes that he is just going to have to deal with this issue coming up again with the next buyer if he ends up sending you away so I am trying to hold my ground while being reasonable.

,I may be wrong but ...If you received a contract signed by the seller which you then had your agent revise before you signed it, then the act of making revisions nullifies the seller's signature and the seller would need to sign the revised contract.If that is how the series of events unfolded, I would think you never had a valid contract signed by both the seller and the buyer. 

The more competitive the more potential buyers, but also the more people you will be competing against to get deals. 

@Raymond Hill my sense is that due to the various costs and regulations involved, as @Brandon Ingegneri mentioned in his examples, it just makes more economic sense for builders to focus on single families than multis.I think it's related to the fact that most single family purchases don't make sense from an investment point of view because as an investor who's looking at income and expense #s to determine what you can offer, you're competing with owner-occupants who have very favorable financing and are buying because of the school district and because they like the kitchen and bathroom, not whether the rents vs. expenses & mortgage is profitable.In other words, because of the favorable financing and "use benefit", the buyers of single families almost always pay more per unit than the buyers of multi families.

Most, or all buyers have realtors because it is free.

@Stone Jin the question came into mind when I was in a forum where buyers were mentioning the class of property and location of property they prefer.

Our serious buyers havent had a problem with this, but a few others did.