If you would never hire a professional withour checking their background, references and skills.

Then pack up and move on.Strong negotiating skills suggest knowing when to move on is critical.

This takes some people skills because you don't want to lose a good buyer.

If your finances / credit are a shambles and your current income isn't helping you sort it out,     then obviously you need to focus on gaining more income.Set your financial issues aside for now - they're not helping you - and learn to work around them.One of the biggest newbie mistakes is thinking that you need your own money and sterling credit to get into REI.While those certainly do help, if you don't have them, you need to find a different solution.Learn to attract and engage private lenders.Folks with large retirement accounts - medical people, attorneys, ... high-income professionals who may or may not be self-employed - need alternatives to the risks, whims and paltry ROI of Wall Street.

Do you need to be skilled in it, or could a semi-handy person do it?

Real Estate professional development should be around 5 skills and they are marketing; estimating repairs; contracting; appraisals; and negotiating.  

Maybe I would learn more general and useful skills going that route as well, and I can do it in my local area. 

Your state is in the process of voting for medical weed so expect this sort of thing to be very common.

According to him, he says he needs to sell for family medical reasons.I haven't nailed down exact numbers, however I'd estimate a seller financed price of 140K, and he suggested 10% down.  

I do look at military with decent credit differently as they do receive a housing allowance, food allowance, and other support systems like medical, etc., so would consider an exception.