You need to spend just as much time finding investors as you do finding deals. 

The only things left for me to do was to add appliances in the kitchen, add a fence in the front and had a lot of tree that were almost falling on the house after hurricane Baril, so I had to spend almost 5k in cutting the trees.

This might reduce the time and resources you spend finding buyers for each deal, which could, in turn, lower your marketing costs and the need for extensive negotiations.Also, to clarify, the exclusive buyer agreement would only apply to the leads/addresses that the buyer provides.

It can still work in niche situations but I think it is a grind and you gamble time and money. 

You'll still need some serious SEO and/or ad-spend.

It depends on if you got to the level of a trade or busienss which would determine if its ordinary income or not.Then the amount of time you spend on the business would determine if its passive or non-passive.

Your payment is lower but to recoup what you'd be spending to get there is going to take a good chunk of time. 

Overall I would treat this investment as a high risk gamble and willing to accept loss if it failed but It's also a very interesting process to understand how the industry works.

It is not a one day process...just be ready to spend some time on this phase before you start construction/rehab on your future deals.Please share your building permit  experience in City of ATL  ..............................................

Basically, your paying of your property own it free in clear but never been able to spend a dollar in 7 years (hope I don't get run over by a bus on year 7).