Make your responses unique to ensure delivery.

I lent my money out first to ensure my underwriting guidelines are strict enough and so far...it's good.

The attorney's generally discuss the perimeters of the contract to ensure everything is adhered to and the title company ensures funds are distributed properly & check for any outstanding issues that might delay closing. 

This ensures that friends and family that live near the home will tell their FB friends.

These methods ensure that you're never paying if you're not getting value (or that you can immediately stop paying should you stop getting value), and in my book, that's a perfectly reasonable method of charging for any service.The analogy I like to use is, "Would you consider it reasonable for a restaurant to charge upfront for 10 meals before you've had an opportunity to try the food."  

We were considering utilizing surveillance inside of our project to monitor the work being done and ensure the contractors are actually at the property.

You can't just swap out the outlets without ensuring they are wired to match.

In that case you can get a contract on the house and wholesale it normally as long as you ensure the foreclosure process won't be completed by the time your end buyer closes on it.  

You want to ensure they have adequate reserves and are conservative with the finances.  

Also you need to ensure that all of the "net proceeds to seller" at the closing of the initial property, is rolled into the exchange and not taken out being that you are taking on a greater debt.