Your skill set is not going to be the same as everybody else's - if you are up against a seasoned contractor who has an army of discount accounts and instantly available tradesmen and women and a slew of loaded investors or bank accounts behind them then you are going to be in a weaker position but luckily there are lots of deals to be had so you get to move on and let them deal with the subsidence issue that nobody spotted because they didn't do their due diligence!

Tenants have sewage coming up in their tub.. that smells like Sh*t to them but smells like a discount for you!

He's dumping his money back into the stock market right now because it's at a better "discount" than the real estate market. 

The median sales price in the Philadelphia Metro Area gained for the nineteenth straight month, with attached home pricing (up by an average of +7.2%) outpacing detached homes (up +5.3%) over that time.Philadelphia County celebrated its 51st consecutive month of year-over-year median close price gains, dating back to December 2015.The number of closings in the Philadelphia Metro (4,445) hit a new February high.Activity in the Philadelphia Metro continues to flourish, as new pending home sales saw a best ever for the month of February.

I guess if it goes straight from Active to Pending in MLS then you can assume there was no option, but that's not 100% true.You just have to determine a way to make your offers stronger....more earnest, more option, faster option, higher price, offer to pay title, eliminate the home warranty and there's a whole host of other things you can do to make your offers look better. 

So straight to the question!

.), increased weekly and monthly discounts, and we are marketing our properties for monthly stays on Craigslist, Furnished Finder, Facebook, etc.

Do I apply for financing with lenders for conventional and see if I can qualify (another hard ding on my credit) or do I go straight to Hard money lending/ seller financing. 

I am trying to get educated on this because I cannot get a straight answer from my lender and closing date is in three weeks.

Worse case I'm going to be buying in a year at a discounted rate.