The article says 20 bids and the winning one "wasn't an outlier," so we have good reason to believe the sales price is ballpark accurately telling us true market value for the home, without even having run comps.Really, what's more likely at play here, is a listing agent that wants to be able to juice up his "average % over asking" pitch a little bit more for future listing presentations.

In the future, this will be a question I add to my diligence checklist, but in this instance, is it reasonable to ask the seller to make a purchase price concession to account for the missing security deposits?

The reason Bob did not buy the property outright from Mike is because the end goal is to fix and sell, so it seemed silly to pay excise tax twice, also there was a lien on the home and Bob did not want to fool with financing to acquire the property to just turn around and sell.  

This is another reason most realtors do not want to spend much time with buyers and they do fine w/o your help.

The reason for underwriting back to the individuals is to confirm you don't need to make a draw from the subject property to satisfy your other obligations.

Jason Henning Maybe showing an interest in helping him find his 1031 property will give him a reason to be more open to entertaining your deal.

I'm new to this type of analysis and I'm comfortable running the numbers but I need help determining whether or not a seller's proforma numbers are reasonable.  

The reason you aren’t retaining the actual training is because they are not teaching you about flipping deals, they are talking double talk in circles that sounds good, but leads nowhere accept to convince you to purchase their advanced training.    

Money is cheap right now & one of the most important reasons one should invest in real estate is to use cheap bank money.

There aren't a lot of duplex here that are like that , it's strange I don't really know the reason why But they cash flow great I have 2 but there both apartments style vs traditional.