The payment you made to the program, which required half of the profits from the sale, is typically not considered a closing cost in the traditional sense.

To make matters worse, the property isn't appreciating (because it's in a low appreciation market, or even a depreciating market), and the tenant pool is primarily made up of people with bad credit, low/no income, and a history of property damage at the previous places they've rented.

What would be a path someone could recommend for me to take in order to land my first property?

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

When I add those up, if the high value still works for me I have a really solid deal because that means everything went wrong and I still made money.

I am afraid that once the house is closed on, and inspections are made from the DOB that they might find something wrong and open a costly can of worms, Could anyone offer some advice and/or words from experience for when dealing with open permits?  

They are either unreasonable people or they made a decision to rent your property they regret. 

There have been a lot of people saying that paying $250 for a mentor is an exorbitant amount but I see it as me receiving 250k (my split) that I possibly wouldn't have made on my own.Abel, that is a great point about the non-compete agreement.

The AppFolio app that is used to manage the rental property has overcharged beyond the legal 12%many times and the bookkeeping for historical payments from tenants has been doctored to show different amounts and to correct thelmistakes made by the online algorithm! 

Now a far as the other statement you made or even if there’s others that may think the same way.