The "GURU" (I use it loosely) told you to take these steps:Find a property on the MLSrun numbers,get a buyer to agree to pay you a finders feehave your agent to show it, to write an offer.That path is likely illegal in all 50 states.

Myself, I pay a property manager and they are cost-neutral,  because Im a sucker for a sob story and loose a bunch of money to that. 

This loosely relates to the broken windows theory, which can be applied to many different domains, including real estate.  

Wow, that seems excessive.

Either way it is a big part of being profitable or loosing your shirt..As far as getting clients- go to VBRO.com and check out the competition and their rates.

They may look at expenses but that gives them an idea of future expenses but is not a qualifying matter unless expenses are excessive and it matters what they are, if they are likely to be ongoing or if they were incidental in that year.

But, that's it - they "pencil", but in reality, in terms of IRR - they loose over the hold period.  

I would rather loose a couple hundred on my earnest deposit rather than the seller coming after me for more.

On the one hand you could look @ the cash flow you'd be loosing as a loss but in reality it's not.  

There is a lot of talk about getting sued and loosing everything but I have yet to see it happen and the only times I am aware of where it got bad for a landlord, they had it coming not following my first bit of advice.