Some good areas and many bad and it can be street to street.  

I have used the Thumbtack app in the past and its helped filter out the bad contractors.

Please don't feel bad for me or anything.

I also used a few credit cards and a 401k loan which is what contributed to my holding costs.

Was up watching the Notre Dame/Texas game (too bad the Irish lost, great game!)

If you try to cut the agent's throat on the fee bad news travel in a hurry, and no one will work with you.

Crime really does appear to be bad in the area.

They are way overpriced, the classes don’t give you enough information and they try to upsell you a coaching program to counterbalance the incomplete course.I know this because when we started I maxed out two credit cards to take one of those $11,000 courses.Later, at my local Real Estate Investor Association, I learned a good course should only run around $500.

Have good credit (825) last it was checked, and have about 40k equity in my home.

I ran the Transunion SmartMove background check with credit report, criminal history, and eviction report and it came back clean, but had to reject two other applicants after their SmartMove scores came back low for low credit scores and numerous pre-eviction filings at local courts.