In that case, you should be free to go straight to the seller with your offer and cut the wholesaler out of the deal altogether.

Eventually we settled on $100/mon/unit flat fee on $1000 units that we'll increase to $12-1300 shortly.

I evicted non-paying tenants in March right before COVID.I moved their belongings (obvious crap, like 20 yo sofa or non-flat screen TVs) to the local storage (spent over $1200 to do that and notified former tenants properly) and started to rehab the house (spent $15k up to date!).

I was under the impression that taking 10% of the monthly gross rent would account for those capex items, but it sounds like what you're suggesting is to itemize them individually in addition to a flat 10%? 

Agree, leave rent flat. 

Either flat out tell them to move out (when contract is over or violated), or if they are only just super annoying, raise rent to the point where their frustration is compensated by the extra rent you are charging.And if they can get "way more" rent, none of my comment above matters, they should charge way more rent because thats the market rate. 

Renting a 2 family flat.

It also is helpful to have a California LLC in case you ever sell that property and move into another state so that you do not need to form a new LLC altogether with new operating agreement, just re-register in the new state as a new foreign LLC.

My existing two-flat back in Chicago, along with 25% down from my severance, helped qualify us for multi-family property here in California.

Hi Dale,I bought a block of flats recently where one of the flats was partially renovated, and the rest completely unrenovated.The partially renovated flat definitely came in a lot cheaper to bring to finish, so you might be onto something.If you do like Dean said though and get a lot of thorough quotes you will know for sure and can't go wrong.