With wholesaling, I find that I have to be much more involved in the business day-to-day, I have to spend lots of time on the phone, I have to do lots of networking and "selling", etc.But, these aren't the things I want to be doing.With rehabbing, I can mostly extricate myself from the day-to-day business, hire and delegate most of the work out and only have to work a few hours/week.

I am hoping to work out a deal with the current owner to pay off the back taxes with an additional $10-15,000 to aquire the property.

How annoying.Why do you need access--to do routine maintenance?

Furthermore I have also been told that you can no longer represent the LLC for even simple court cases like routine evictions.

If the agent lists the property with the owner then the brokerage mentioned in the listing contract has the relationship with the owner.The agent is working on behalf of the broker.Most states have laws that all offers that are written have to be submitted to the sellers.Used to what you were doing was easy to do a few years ago.You could try many different tactics depending on what asset manager you got that day.Many short sales were conducted on the fly with the loss mitigation departments.Now the government has created the short sale streamlined process and many banks have actual short sale departments.This means the process is more automated and harder to manipulate in your favor as an investor.Servicers have to go by strict protocol in their servicing agreements.Not following the agreement can affect mortgage insurance payouts and potential lawsuits from investors who own the loans.The servicer has to document everything and show the least damaging route was taken for the investor.When the loan is a RMBS (residential mortgage backed security) sometimes they would rather foreclose than do a workout with the homeowner.This is because the senior investors position for payoff is first and they don't care about the investors in a first loss position on the security.So what you can do as a short sale will depend on the loan type and who is backing it and the servicing agreement.If it has to be listed they will not proceed until it is done.An hourly worker who has to document steps is not going to fore go one of those steps so that you an investor can gain from it.There is a chance that once it is listed that they will still accept or counter your offer.It also depends on if you are paying cash or asking for expenses.The seller almost never has money on a short sale and any costs have to come off the banks side.

Just give them a few days notice that you'd like to enter the premises for some routine maintenance.

Most people find out that cold calling does not work out that hot.

If its anything unused like beer or water bottles or soda I will leave them for myself or the next tenants, throw away all other used items.Check the back patio and tidy up if needed.We leave instructions asking to load and run the dishwasher before departure as well....again 90% or more have done so, and I simply check this and clean anything thats needed, then put away dishes once ready and kind of look around to make sure everything in order.Leave a check for the maids and run all the bed sheets up to a wash and fold service that has them ready usually in 3 hours.That is about it in a nutshell....once you get a routine down its pretty automatic and probably spend no more then 30-45 minutes running through the house dealing with things.

I can't speak for others, but I routinely point out in my posts that I'm not a tax professional or an attorney because I don't want the person asking the question to substitute my non-expert opinion for an expert opinion, nor do I want them to assume that the information I giving is based on any formal knowledge of either tax or law.I imagine others may do it also to help protect themselves in the case of a civil lawsuit whereby the information they provided was construed as a professional opinion though it was not.

I had a partnership that didn't work out because we all had competing goals.