This is no different than a baker using $1 of ingredients to make and sell a $4 chocolate chip cookie.You can only flip so many houses, so the ability to scale is based on your time and energy.

It’s a business to business deal - no consumer involved.Participants “earn” whatever “the market will bear”.  

Yep, that's how much one realtor could have earned if they had met me even halfway on what I need.  

It doesn’t seem like you would earn anything in the way of appreciation. 

The vendors are typically paid far less than they would earn on a normal job, so they tend to be lower-quality vendors and slower to respond.

The big money is earned from inflation and you cannot increase the value of single-family homes by increasing the rents.I know very little about financing because I always went with conventional loans, but I have many friends who purchased properties with financing and just about zero money down.

So it will be a quasi partnership but basically it would be more like having an investment time share that they earn 6% on and they get to enjoy the property for a week each year including 2 year years after they get paid back.

Lots of ingredients in this soup. 

The goal has to have a finite destination and time limit on it.For example you may say your goal is 20 houses in 20 years (paid off) earning $20,000 per month.. (20,20,20 goal).Now you know where you're going and the timeframe for this to happen.

Home prices - what are the values of property in this part of the country relative to what they could earn as a STR?