One way to stand out from the crowd is to offer a free Home  Seller's Guide on all of your marketing material. 

It is possible to wholesale a short sale and has been done frequently, but the banks are less forgiving now and it is tougher to get material discounts. 

If he needs some large draw up front,  I would buy the materials from Home Depot and work with the contractor to have it delivered to the house.  

To me, minimal means I'm going to clean some carpet, put less than $500 in new/replace material into it and then paint a couple rooms.What you want to do here is turn "minimal" into a number.  1.

Bathroom and Floor tiles (Plus Materials) are all on site.This week we will begin to primer and Paint, begin to install the Kitchen, Bath, and Floor Tiles, and start to install the new wood floors.We originally were going to refinish all of the wood floors, however after starting to work on the floors we realized that some of the floors don't have enough wood on the broads in order for us to sand down and refinish.

If you make the minimum monthly payment on time every month, and pay the entire amount off before the end of the promotional period, you will pay zero interest - essentially a free loan.

Since I am new to the business, can anyone recommend any good books or materials to look over as I start my real estate journey?

(yikes looks like Ariel's self-promotion was removed)

We basically only need to pay for the property including taxes etc. and the building materials needed, since we can plan and build by ourselves. 

We basically only need to pay for the property including taxes etc. and the building materials needed, since we can plan and build by ourselves.