I'm no longer seeing any advantage to it as a consumer.

In today's market, I personally am not buying anything that isn't a near gut remodel, because consumers are willing to buy any house that essentially only needs cosmetic work but is livable, so prices don't leave any profit.  

Other states may not be as strict, however, as a consumer, you certainly want to protect yourself from a contractor charging a draw for services not rendered yet and then taking off. 

But we also wanted as many eyes as possible on the property and let consumer's desire to not lose let the price run up.  

It was hard, messy, time consuming and exhausting.

By keeping the selection process as the focus (required walk of the property, online application and screening for a required move-in date), it avoids getting consumed by those who have other agendas. .

It gives MLS level information on the agent side with Pro and still syndicates all MLSs like Zillow and the other major consumer sites.

I am obviously new and am consuming the information in here daily but still fell I am missing direction. 

Example: I want to lose 30 pounds in 90 days...that means I need to lose 1 pound every three days.. to do that I need to work out 45 minutes per day, track my calories daily and consume no more than 2000 calories per day, ever 3 days I should be 1 pound down4.

Don't take this the wrong way, but your agent may be finding it too time consuming to work with you when there are so many buyers out there.