I've offered to let them paint but apparently the male "doesn't want to spend his days off painting".  

I agree, it's very hard to find an agent that both understands and wants to work with investors; it seems that most agents (rightfully so in many cases) think that they're going to spend bunch of time looking at houses only to put lowball offers in that aren't likely to be accepted.

Grab your last two years' of tax returns and I will be more than happy to sit down with you and spend some time trying to figure it out.Hope that helps.JZ

.@ Ned Carey, Regarding neighborhoods, I have been spending more and more time in the neighborhoods surrounding Johns Hopkins main campus (Hampden, Waverly, etc.) and I am probably going to start concentrating on one of these neighborhoods soon.

Stop spending any of her money.

Don't spend time counting the other guy's money.

So we're not committing to anything until AFTER we've had time to verify everything.Regarding costs that we pay out of pocket - Any costs that we (xxx or I) spend out of our pocket (i.e. materials, utilities, insurance, evictions, taxes etc) we would expect to be compensated those costs back at closing.

If that's your plan, I agree with @Jeremy Pace, that you should simply explain to agent what you want and exactly how much you want to spend to get it.I've learned that statements like "I want a good deal" or "I want something inexpensive that needs work" are too broad for an agent to get a good idea of what you want. 

Hey Welcome to the real estate investing world, In my opinion you do not need much capital to begin wholesaling the most of your marketing dollars in the beginning will go towards direct mail campaign ( These can get a bit expensive but the return is great if done right )  So i would suggest getting your feet wet with wholesaling before jumping right in and spending massive dollars on marketing and just start with getting some bandit signs to attract buyers/sellers , and building a website to attract leads also and build from there.

If the storm door is closed, unless it doesn't have any glass I doubt you're spending much more than a couple of dollars on heat versus closing the front door.