The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Wholesaling and The Book on Flipping Houses are good places to start if you're looking for breakdowns of how the strategies work.

My ultimate goal is to develop a passive income and become financially independent so I have more time doing important things like...saving the world and searching for long lost treasures and civilizations.  

Here is a good article that I came across before when delving into scraping Craigslist:http://ghostproxies.com/blog/2015/09/the-ultimate-...In the article they do talk about a few different options for you to use.Suffice to say, your choices are either to pay someone for their software/service or you need to dig in and get dirty with some of the free code available.

It sounds like you did a ton of work to it, and saved tens of thousands in labour costs by doing it yourself.Congrats on the sale and the profit!

Reading through The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Wholesaling takes you through the steps and how to properly calculate what's needed for your property. 

I would think that replacing the hardwood is easier and cheaper when you factor in all the time to remove the wood, sand/treat the wood, and the fact that you have to save each piece and remember where it went. 

Have you considered that the Fed's printing money like water to buy our Federal Debt is really just a hidden tax on all citizens who try to save Dollars or expect the real value of their rentals to appreciate?

Start saving for a downpayment, it doesn't have to be 20%.

Ultimately you're going to need an local expert who knows the area and knows investment properties.Stockton will get you much higher returns on average, and that's because the average property is $40-50k less but the rents are still fairly comparable.

As long as you always do your own due diligence and make an informed decision, wholesalers can and do bring a lot of value and savings to the table.