Collecting non-cash flowing houses, or weakly cash flowing houses, is a plan for failure.Move on...or make your offer based on what you NEED not what the seller WANTS.  

Details seemed odd to me and decided to bring this area of lending or borrowing up for some discussion.THE REAL SECRETS IN LENDING:There are none as to the functions, documents, processing, underwriting, settlements, administration or collections nor to any legal aspects.

So, if I run a website that collects leads and sells them to agents/brokers, does the require a license?  

The builder may or may not have had problems but neighbors may have raised heck or collectively made an offer purchasing an interest in specific lots to "protect" the homeowner's property values.A trick of builder developers is to build nicer homes first, then infill latter with cheaper homes allowing the nicer home to influence price, they also add commercial later on as either depresses value of the nicer home built first.

As a result, he winds up doing quite well on the rent he collects from the tenants. 

Those values are for collecting taxes, not buying and selling.

They are really valuable to know.You will need to collect all the emails of every Realtor you talk to.

You should probably consider collecting a separate deposit for the utilities.  

The loan then allows me to pay for the houses and gives me 5,000 as operating funds until I start collecting rents, and the sale price is 75,000 for both houses total.

I have one rental property which I paid cash for and collect good rent on.(1600 we paid 155) Im looking to purchase another house around this price, but this time I will only be putting 20%down.