I made a big mistake of lacking understanding of agents and how the contracts can work, so I hurt a friend (the one who contacted me about the house) by contacting another agent to represent me.

My solutions: 1) Get highly competent attorneys to represent you and that have a better shot at getting things to go your way.

Question - If I have a deal under contract, and a friend who's a real estate agent has a buyer he's representing, could I assign the contract to the buyer for a fee?

not the other way around.. they risk discipline if they are not representing the seller.. 

Do you use an attorney for those cases or do you just self represent?

I'd advise looking for a good, full time Realtor there.If you're not going to use that agent to represent you, I'd offer to pay for his or her time. 

Our products — for non-owner occupied — require 20-35% down plus closing costs and fees.Having said that, a handful of my products will do 100% of the actual rehab costs, with some limitations.Of course, I only work with about 100 lenders, so I am not necessarily representative, but chances are not high for your client to come in with $0.Good Luck!

Last week I had a similar scenario on a deal I was representing a client to purchase and turned to our in house lender.

There is nothing wrong with using existing photos as long as they represent the property condition...happens all the time.

If they don't cashflow $500 per door it's highly likely that the numbers for the new homes are not representative for the market.