Impossible to answer the "how much" question - too many variables can factor in (size of home, area, amount of rooms staged, quality of furniture, etc.I just staged a 2800 sq. ft home and did the entire home less two bedrooms.

If you do some investigation on the tactical aspects of how Buffett invests, the bulk of his success is based on his ability to bring in tremendously strong middle management -- and by middle management, I don't mean what most people typically think of when they hear the term.Strong middle management in this sense has the ability to transition fluently from on-the-ground day-to-day tactical work to high-level over-arching business strategy (and everything in-between), and there are very few people in any industry that have the ability to be true middle management for a Buffett or Buffett-like company.Finding folks who could play the middle management role in company overseeing millions of rentals is probably near impossible, especially given that the bulk of those who are qualified probably don't need the money or the recognition that comes with working for Buffett.I certainly could be wrong, but that's my take on why he's not actually doing it...at least not yet...

It's nice having full access to someone (you ont get that with contractors), but the responsibility that comes along with employees is great.As an example, summers are generally pretty slow for us, so we considered taking the summer off and traveling for a few months...but having employees who need the paycheck (my project manager makes 80% of his salary as commission) that's impossible.

Also, should you be lucky enough to get them, then you still are going to have to try and collect, which in many cases is impossible.

Good deals are almost impossible to find in this area but the market is consistently one of the most solid in the country-Single family B class in highly desireable area surrounded by solid A class propertys listed on MLS for a few months at $109,900.

Here's the problem with that strategy if he's submitting "a ton of offers": Every short sale I've offered on, the bank has required a copy of the Articles of Organization and Operating Agreement during the negotiation process, so to do this correctly, he'd need to be setting up "a ton of" LLCs, which can get expensive very, very fast.And if he's offering on every property in the name of one LLC, he runs the risk of the bank not allowing him to change purchaser information, in which case he could end up with lots of properties all in the same LLC, which would make it impossible to sell individual properties to different buyers by selling the entity.Is he setting up different LLCs for each property?

From what I gather "Stated Income" based mortgages are history (or nearly impossible to find)..

I'm confused about this because when dealing with probate/estate properties, lenders have been difficult to impossible to work with...even if you are an heir with a deed and/or court order.

One is impossible, the other very hard.If you find a house and then try to find that exact loan for sale, it is impossible.If you shop for loans that are for sale, find one and then research it and discover the house/deal is right, it can be done.

If you have 40K+ cash, ideally, you find something for about 40K in a decent school district, round up another 15K for a rehab and end up with something with an 80K ARV (tough but not impossible - personally, as as long term holder, I would be jiggy with 70K ARV, but that would only be about 80% ARV).