I used Lending Club and Prosper to finance houses that were low cost. 

The other one that fell through had a judgement filed against the homeowner right after we did the quit claim with the mortgagor and were about to close and redeem the property from the person that bought it at the sheriff sale.That judgement terminated the mortgagor's (and therefore our) ability to redeem that property.The response rate on our marketing campaigns has been extremely low; south of 1%, in fact.Our campaigns include door knocking, leaving notes on doors, as well as mailing the property and new addresses of the owners (when applicable).  

He is very low key and has little foot print n the web  what is there looks good but I am concerned at just how little there is.  

If you are planning to rehab to resell and the money will only be tied up a short time, cash is a great idea or you could look into a hard money loan, however those can be extremely expensive.

Conversely you can get a property at 60% if the price point is too low you wouldn't make enough money to make it even worth your time to do the flip, since the 40% spread represents too small of a dollar figure.

Commingling funds and improper signing are low lying fruit.

Zillow on the other hand, seems to appraise about 10 - 15% too low. 

for the area, 170k is awfully low for 5k of work.

Often a high cash flowing portfolio doesn't appreciate well (cheap properties in low appreciation areas).

For an example of what I'm talking about, this guy has some great videos showing him making actual phone calls to real motivated sellers: The tutorials, books and podcast are amazing, and if you guys have already done these kind of videos/blogs let me know... but I think videos/blogs chronicling every detail of real deals as they're in progress from start to finish that you guys are working on would be extremely educational.It would be so awesome to watch a series of videos/podcasts or a series of articles/blogs where Josh or Brandon are detailing every step of the process in a deal that they're currently working on.