We wanted to fix up houses and re-sell them for a small profit.

If I owe $350k mortgage and I take out $100,000 HELOC and spend it on say a 6 month CD,And then I sell the house for $700kI would only have $250k profit right?

No disclosure on the sewage problems or any of the interior rehab required as all the BPO listed was a mere $3500 repair estimate for exterior cosmetic issues.An out of state buyer would have no idea that his $90k "bargain" needing minor repairs was actually a $10k property requiring major repairs that exceed the value of the property. 

But no way is this a thing right now in the vast majority of cases.

The deferral is all on major capital expenditures, roofs, HVAC, Water heaters. 

So a majority of the ownership groups would want to sell, plus since they are more sophisticated owners usually would sell through a broker to get max price and not sell privately.  

Regarding all of that work, is there anything you think could be automated that would either free up your time to close on deals faster or help you profit more on a deal?

We built a single family home version of a 2 bed 1 bath with surface parking at cost with no profit all in with land for 175k in newark ohio, a suburb of columbus ohio. when we push that to 3 units and closer to the city for our build to rent model the numbers go way better. a 30k slab for a single family home is 30k, a 30k slab for a triplex is 10k a door. we designed a 2 bed 1 bath design at 668 sq ft and it's very good layout even I would live there, but I would never build anything that small again. there's no economies of scale. you need density and shared lines, resources, shared roof shared slab, shared windows, etc the cost goes way down.

The same thing applies if you've got a trophy rate on your current VA loan.Yes, you can buy another home with a VA loan, convert your current home into a rental and count the majority of the rental income towards offsetting your current mortgage payment to qualify for the new mortgage.

In the last two days, I met with two business sellers who have net profits of $580,000 and $600,000 per year respectively.