Of course this is pure business common sense and what i understand the law is on a perfect scenario. no legal advise given.

Again, check this out with qualified counsel, but purely to provoke thought and questions on your part:RESPA, the law that mandates the whole GFE procedures, applies to "consumer loans secured by 1-4 family residences."

So, IMHO, that $20K number is a purely hypothetical number. 

From a purely legal point, since there is no written agreement, the agent isn't owned anything, but you did say in your question that there was a "general understanding that we would use him to list all properties that he helped us buy".  

Pure BS!

Especially on an emotional level...From a purely work standpoint, I highly recommend focusing part of every day on creating systems and processes that will allow you to streamline parts of your business.

For one of those deals, the key is being a 1031 guy that doesn't care about making more than you already did (just a pure capital gains tax shelter) or being a guy that buys it for his grandkids because the deal will be worth a lot more when the lease finally ends or hits a renewal with a bump in the rent (most of these leases are structred as flat deals without bumps during the initial term).

Your challenges will be two-fold:Finding REI friendly lender local to you, in your state.Finding a deal good enough to make up for the fact that the math isn't as generous with owner occupied 2-4 unit properties as it is with pure investment properties.

Maybe this might not be the correct forum to post this, but people are energy and money is energy, but from reading your post, "not meant to be feeling" is pure rubbish.

This is purely due to the fact that a realtor is representing a seller whose instructions a realtor needs to adhere to by law.