Just remember, you get what you pay for so you may save a couple hundred dollars in prep fees but if they're just doing the bare minimum then you may end up paying hundreds, if not thousands more in taxes.

I signed up a few years ago, barely put any effort into it, yet I've purchased almost 20 flights for free and still have almost 700,000 points saved up.

At the bare minimum you need a safety harness, ascender/descender or Rope Grab, need to know how to use and wear it properly, need to have a second person capable of reaching and assisting you if you DO get fall arrested and happen to go off the roof, and you need permanently mounted roof ridge anchors.

I'm just barely breaking even with my real estate investment, so I'm trying to do everything myself. 

If your market is pretty hot then it may be more cost effective to do the bare minimum to get it ready for sale.

I would rather collect rent and keep that paying down the loan bare minimum, rather than sell and keep money in a bank account "waiting" for an opportunity. 

I'm building two smaller properties like this at the moment that barely work; there's numbers below in case anyone considering this strategy wants to compare their expectations to reality. 

I'll invest places where they have a bare modicum of respect for people taking the risk of providing rentals.

Later on you can get a 401K loan to access that money for investing.In the past I contributed the bare minimum to get the match, but now I contribute the maximum $18,000/year.

Every fix and flip opportunity we look at, we will barely clear $10k-$20k assuming there are no underlying issues.