Hi Jay, no luckily you don't need to be licensed in Colorado to wholesale properties, so that part is fine and totally legal as is in many states.

Quote from @Sanjay Bhagat: 1) Should I hire a third party accountant to interpret the deal sponsor track record for due diligence?

The Podio team at Citrix can you with this, and there are lots of third-party consultants like me to can help as well.  

I know some zip codes in my area that one part is a very high class neighborhood and house are over 1 million while on the other side of the zip code is low class and house are going for 80k? 

Then get photos and get third party verification that everything was done right prior to making your final payment to the contractor.

Do you want to get into what can be a years long battle with multiple parties, including our darling city council, until you get to move into your home the way you want it?

@Carl RezaThe hardest part is taking the first step of knowing your goals and why you're investing, then doing a deal analysis with your market, assets, budgets, etc.

@Chris KellyFind an on-site 3rd party to corroborate.

The benefit of a permit and inspections is to have an independent party verify work. 

i invest via 50/50 partnerships. i find/coordinate/manage the deal, and my partner brings the capital to the deal & approves large expenses. on their end, it's just about as hands-off as investing in a syndication, but they get to be one of just two main 50/50 decision-makers. and when there are just two parties involved in a deal like this, vs it being diluted across tons of investors, i find it's also possible for the capital partner to see much higher returns. when it comes to teaming up in real estate i'm much more relationship-based and less transactional. i'd rather do fewer very high-quality, carefully selected deals, each with just one capital partner, so that i can really serve that person's best interests and get us amazing results, vs. doing a bunch of diluted deals. i also feel a lot of syndicators out there are newer to the game, lack experience, haven't used their own money enough, and don't use their investors' dollars with enough caution. it gives the high quality syndicators a bad name.