Improving your photography can be done pretty easily. A couple of tips from someone ahead of you can save you tons of learning time. Find a photo forum like
City, Still life & Abstract - FM Forums where you can read the threads and post your own work. You'll get criticism, but it'll mostly be constructive and useful.
For example, the first 3 images you posted (by the pro) don't look that great to me. Perhaps getting compressed to post here took a lot out of them, but they don't look very sharp. The white balance looks off to me and they look to be mostly generated with HDR software, giving them a phony look. Most people wouldn't notice, but would notice the brightness and detail.
Image 6 & 7 that you took also lack sharpness, and I doubt that's the fault of your gear. Looks like an EOS Rebel with an 18mm lens from the EXIF data. I would think you could use a wider angle lens- I'm a big fan of the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8. There is software that will correct for wide angle distortion nicely. A tilt-shift is overkill IMHO. Those images also seem to have poor white balance, which is something you can learn to watch. Try "chimping" your images as you take them. See if the image on your LCD matches the color of the live scene. Adjust as necessary. If you shoot with a flash, set the white balance to flash and you'll be amazed how accurate it is. Your best work will come from use of multiple flashes. Start shooting in RAW and try adjusting the white balance in processing. I took your images and tweeked the color & contrast, applied a small distortion adjustment and some sharpening. You'll probably realize how warm your white balance was.
I would also suggest getting a little better eye for composition. Read up on the Rule of Thirds and move past centering subjects dead center. Also look at the balance of your subject with the surroundings. IMO the house is too small in #8. I cropped away some of the surroundings, also tilted the house to make the roofline perfectly horizontal and sharpened it some.
On your #9 image I set the vertical lines straight, sharpened, etc.
All this stuff is opinion and suggestion. Hopefully, you find it helpful.