To us, our time is worth the extra couple hundred on a house worth of furnishings.  

Going up or down a couple of sizes doesn't really affect the price that much, in my experience.If you have something like a 2,500 square foot house from 1910, that hasn't had insulation installed in the outside walls, then yeah, you're gonna need a really big furnace and it will cost more. 

Our absorption rate (time it takes to run out of inventory if buyers keep buying at the current pace and sellers stop selling completely) has been averaging less than 3 weeks for a couple of years, but in January we were up over 1 month. 

Quarterly or every couple months? 

Given my current business model for lending, my preference is to be the primary point of contact with my borrowers and to maintain a strong relationship with those individuals.  

I would recommend attending a couple of auctions just to learn the process.

Say you're checking out a couple of spots, one's 1,000 sqft for $1,000 a month, and the other's 1,200 sqft for $1,300. 

This increases the property's value and can allow you to charge higher rent, improving your cash flow and the property's appraisal value for refinancing.Rent: Lease out the newly acquired and rehabbed properties, preferably to reliable tenants similar to the family you currently have in your townhouse.

If anything I lean towards R2R's model in preference, because one doing things "in-house, is still generally just contracting things, which is doing similar isn't it, relying on vendors for the various aspect's, and only as good as those vendors.

I would prefer the higher loan to value LTV product.