Hard doesn't mean not negotiable and the entirety of negotiating a deal is hard anyway, it should be.

Purchase price: $1,280,000 Cash invested: $400,000 we were presented with the deal by a flipper needing to exit the deal. it was only rentable for $4500/mo as is, so we created a second unit. now it brings in $7200/mo What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

Not saying it won't be a good deal but you have to know that vacancies can last longer the lower the population.

You said that you may consider investing OOS if the deals make sense.

A while ago, there was an agent who prevented me from buying a crappy deal.

I was thinking about getting a Equity Partner for this deal.

I'm not sure what to do in this situation, whether to drop the deal and lose my earnest money or try to find another lender.

If you are looking to do this deal, I suggest looking at seller financing and then having an exit strategy to sell to an all-cash buyer, but personally, I would look at other deals. 

Having to go back and forth to the property 5 or 6 times for things that could have been handled at the same time is rather annoying and that's not counting the fact the realtors have other appointments to get too or could have worked on other deals while the lender did what they were normally supposed to do etc.In my case I had an ideal deal that fit even their own requirement's, hence why I wanted to go with it.

I am also interested in forming potential partnerships to structure my first deal or two.