One might think "who cares, exposing the home to as many buyers as possible will increase my price as a seller," but many realtors are scam-artists and care more about getting paid faster than they care about another $10,000 in sales price (net ~$150 to the realtor - this was discussed in the book Freakanomics btw).

I am curious to see if anyone is willing to admit getting scammed or duped by either a Guru or anything related to RE investing products that did not turn out like advertised?

They are a SCAM.

REI has always been my second passion and luckily I can now devote all my time to it.

any lender asking for more than a few hundred bucks up front is scamming you .. bottom line.. use a reputable lender the ones that @Tom Shallcross mentioned above I have used successfully.

You can typically dial 100 a day before getting marked as scam likely. 

I'm getting up early every day to carve out time to devote to finding deals, buyers, etc...

So I deduced that it is a scam to trick people into being robbed/assaulted.My neighbor got his car broken into about a month or 2 after I bought my house but I passed it off as him having a really nice car and people targeting it.

I hope to get to that point one day where I can devote a mass amount of time to lead generation but at the moment I'm a busy student working 35 hours a week.

Why would I tie my million dollar home for example, up for weeks while you try to figure out what you are doing, not to mention obtain financing for what you told me would be a cash offer….None of what you say makes any sense, and I highly suggest if you're struggling this much with the basics that you read up a bit more before proceeding further....You're either going to get scammed or end up in a bad deal/situation.When I bought my first house at 26 paid in cash, it was noted as a cash offer in the contract.