I've even heard of GCs using auction type settings for returned items at Home Depot and Lowes for steep discounts.I've learned a lot about the GC game as I was up close to over 40 projects last two years and some went well and some did not and when they did not it was all Contractor related.If a GC isn't sourcing cheap materials at the same time milking the hell out of his 150-200 per day workers, then you can find yourself eating into your margins real fast. 

Kind of like a game of craps.

We use a YTD paystub and last year’s W-2(s) to calculate income several different ways:Hourly or salary income calculated to a monthly amountYTD income divided by number of YTD monthsYTD + W-2(s) income divided by the corresponding number of monthsIf these numbers vary too much, then we investigate and require an acceptable Letter of Explanation.Employment StabilityUnless an applicant has exceptional credit, we strive to determine their stability of employment to make sure they’ll always be able to pay the rent on time.

Sounds like a game-changer, or does it?

Quote from @Luis Maza: Hi all, returning to the game this year and would like to pick your brain a bit, we started working with a wholesaler that will send us properties here and there with the "wholesale" price, but every time we check the properties and add the numbers, the margins are, well, I am not sure, too low perhaps, maybe we are getting to picky, but this is my dilemma for example...Today we got a property, wholesale price 300K, rehab about 50-60K, ARV is about 440k, but with the cost of hard money, we have about 100k cash, hard money interest at 11%, keeping the property for 90 days while we finish the rehab, closing costs,  commissions, we ended with 30k profit before taxes, while it sounds appealing, adding up all expenses and cost we ended up expending 50K on rehab(labor/materials) and about 50-60K with cost of the loan, interest, commissions, etc, everyone makes money, happy with that, but it seems that we are working to produce a 100k for everyone else, while we make 20-30k if everything goes well...In my opinion, we are not really getting "wholesale" price, it seems that we either buying to expensive, rehabs are much more than we would like to spend and the cost of borrowing that money is too high...We came up with thoughts as: lets fund it ourselves with money from a close friend/partner that we will bring in, and that would save us 10-15k here and there, but still, is that the norm now?

I was double that and so was Holt homes.. some of the one off builders were still at 2% or 2.5%  and it varied with how hot the market was the commish was moving all over the place.. the transaction I am talking about the broker had their client low ball us and ask for about 200k in upgrades PLUS double our normal commish rate..

Your experience may vary.

IMO, only worth it if you have access to enough capital to scale your efforts, though.Can't be compared.To do well in the lending game, in addition to controlling your risk and what others have mentioned, you need... 

So, instead of wholesaling your next property to a single buyers list, try looking “outside of the box” to find cash buyers for real estate deals.If you already know where to find cash buyers, you are ahead of the game.

Hard Money lenders will vary with their general "friendliness" towards first time investors/flippers but there is availability for even a big portion of the flip financed (like 85% of costs) from some HMLs - believe it or not, you can get that much of your first flip financed!