I'm a young guy (22) with hopes of working into my 30's to develop enough career capital and experience to start my own business and become financially independent...

Bad management can turn a good property into a loser. 

As I've mentioned in a prior post, I've become unemployed in my industry of 17 years (banking - mostly in marketing analytics, market strategy and operations strategy - analyzing where to place new and close offices, etc based on market potential), and am considering a career change to maximize my future.

If you were in their shoes, you would be trusting the past landlord's reference and wouldn't want to end up with a bad tenant. 

Just try and learn as much as you can about the entire process and filtering out bad deals from the good ones.

I don’t think it’ll be as bad as most people think.  

A pre approval might not be a bad idea to get a lay of the land.

Hoarders are a fact.. most are owner occ's as they need years to create those conditions.I tore down  5 houses last year all Hoarders so bad you would not even fathom it.. 

I have some BAD debts I could eliminate, some debts I could work on, add to savings, or do something else?

Thanks for your time.Also do you think becoming a residential real estate agent is a bad career to get into in the next couple of years due to the technological advances, making agents more obsolete?