Unless you're a real estate agent and can perform the short sale yourself I don't foresee one paying a "fee" to take one on- they can be very tedious, time consuming and sometimes banks will reduce commissions which makes for a whole lot of work for little pay.Now, if you could be the actual end buyer on the deal (short sale)- then that would be worth exploring.

I'm scouring BP for articles on wholesaling in the hopes of reducing the number of mistakes I'll make with investors and sellers.I'm an Air Force veteran and I do art in my spare time.

To do so at the rate I want to, and without significantly reducing our modest lifestyle, I need feel that I need to also focus on doing a few SFR flips through the year to generate additional funds, to help accelerate the velocity of my buy and hold property acquisition program.Therein is where I find the rub.

Rent control REDUCES available housing.

You can reduce your Income from your regular job by this much. 

They get a really reduced price and then find a way to fix it for less cost to resale.

They can see this by seeing if you filed a homestead exemption which is typically done in in CA to reduce your property tax basis by 7k to lower your taxes and this shows you lived there and then they go back to see if you switch it to a rental later by checking to see if you have an offsite mailing address.

It sounds like you've experienced the dilemma a lot of us do - that what you do to pay less in taxes (reduce income, accelerate/increase expenses) ends up hurting you when it comes time to apply for a loan.The good news is that if you own your own business and know you want to start usingou bank loans, you can start making yourself look better by increasing your salary, etc.Once you feel more comfortable with RE investing you also definitely might benefit from looking into a Solo 401(k) - but I almost hesitate to mention it because at this point it could just complicate your life and distract you from learning more about RE.

If the sale price is lower than the assessed tax value, apply to get them reduced with the sales data.

Do you see much opportunity to boost rents or reduce utility costs?