sounds like you are like most and need a local mentor who assists you and gets paid as a JV to your deals for x period of time.  

I'm sorry I cannot be of much assistance on this topic other than to encourage you to investigate everything that anyone tells you to the fullest.  

I would add one thing...offer the tenant some moving assistance if they decide to move out.

As great as the Internet can be, I think learning from someone with experience in person is the best thing for me.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. 

Since you are working with a buyers agent, and I assume s/he is assisting with some of the sourcing of deals, you might consider this situation a learning experience as what to expect when you get into competitive buying situations.Depending on the price of property it might be advantageous to reach an agreement in advance with your buyers agent to pay them a fixed fee or % of the agreed to price when a similar situation arises.

At this scale, you need legal assistance, this can be done with a master lease arrangement and you can also secure your interest as a future advanced note/obligation agreement to cover additional money invested on repairs.

I've eliminated 65% of my water problems (mostly thanks to the rare useful comment here, none of which come as a result of some pompous prick talking down to me on the internet), I've made the properties much nicer for the tenants, and increased the property value in the process.Originally posted by @Tyler Weaver: If you cannot fix the water issue in the basement perhaps the easiest fix is to not offer the basement use as common area for the building.

I have listened to countless webinars, and scoured the internet that has given me an abundance of good information.  

I plan to use my background in accounting, finance, and operations to begin my journey and I look forward to leveraging BP to assist in achieving my goals.