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 have a contrary play. 

That is a dangerous game to play with students.

Carrying costs in purchase and or rehab is financed, cost of capital on refi, re-recording, title, updated insurance, etc. their are many costs at play after initial funding then to transition long term unless your straight cash on the front end.

This campus hosts a large Magnolia home goods store, high end furniture store, cupcake bakery, coffee shop, gardening shop, live music concert venue, large grass area with toys and balls for kids to play with, an open plaza with eight food trucks, a small baseball field (that Babe Ruth once played on and families can now play on for fun), a restored historic chapel (the oldest chapel in Central Texas), and six boutique shops with men, women, and children's products.

Quick cash on a flip is going to 1. give you more cash to play with vs HELOC interest rates 2. give you an opportunity to 1031 exchange into your next investment. 

Having a PMS with automated reminders has been a game-changer for us too, making it easy to manage renewals without much manual follow-up.

Location plays a big factor into this question. 

Check out this article that sheds light on how they come into play with this strategy.

I had a good friend when I lived in Napa and played golf with him frequently he was a Brain Surgeon and had the yipes something fierce could not make a 2 foot put to save his life..