As someone with no actual experience investing in real estate, I want to know what kind of data I should be looking at so I can start to practice analyzing some potential deals. 

The value to the buyer can add up to a very sizeable amount of money; typically pays the up-front lender fee to lower the interest rate, which results in accumulating paid interest savings for the buyer as long as the buyer owns the property, or for the life of the loan; may add up to many tens of thousands of dollars; make sure you check the fine print of the lender's loan lock provisions; be sure your seller's money is truly paying down the loan rate as opposed to paying other lender charges to the buyer.  3.Seller-Funded Temporary BuydownsBuydowns can also be structured to adjust the buyer-paid interest rate for a limited number of years; can cover the first two, three or four years or more of the buyer's loan; allows your seller to reduce the buyer's ongoing loan cost (monthly payment) considerably.4.Owner FinancingA willing seller may be able to keep their selling price intact by offering financing to a buyer; for a seller who needs to sell as soon as possible for the best possible price; expands the potential market for buyers to those who might not qualify with a lender for any number of reasons relating to their credit, verifiable income, or other issues; seller creates an 'investment" that can produce an annuity with a very good rate of return for many years; seller needs to become very well educated on how to qualify a potential buyer (how to get credit, income, debt ratio, and other accurate personal historical data on the buyer-and how to verify that data); seller needs legal advice to review contract documents, as well as title and escrow services to conduct a title search and closing; buyers attracted to seller financing may have income sources including part- time work, bonus income, royalty income, dividend and interest income from investments, or they may be newly self employed; seller who finances needs to get a substantial down payment and ensure that the property is adequately insured by the buyer and that initial property taxes are pre-paid and a tax payment plan is established; if the buyer stops paying, the seller will have to proceed like a bank or other lender and foreclose on the buyer. 5.Contract for DeedA contract for deed agreement to purchase is similar to a seller-financed purchase.

Is the data right?

For skip tracing, I have an in-house data team that skip traces for my company.

Watch the BP YouTube channel for some data relating to this this week!

I would definitely consider hard money again, but this time I'd try to put something in contractually in the commitment letter to protect my out of pocket costs, explain even better every single aspect about the property, etc. so that the underwriting is more based on objective data than simply someone's opinion. 

build a data base  be very polite ASK them if its OK to call in 6 months to see if anything changes..

Collect your own data, and make your own conclusions.

This could open up doors for off-market deals in the future- Access to market data- Ability to sell your own deals and collect commission to offset licensing and mls fees. 

The wall at the entry would be a deal breaker...buyers are ready to bolt when the door opens.