He pays lots of money to stay current on real estate law and shares it at his huge monthly investor meetings, including bringing his attorney on stage to discuss and explain topics and allows the audience to throw tough questions to the attorney so everyone can learn. 

The work that was done was based on the evaluation recommendation of "long term construction  material shrinkage, deterioration consistent with age of the structure, and differential foundation movement". snippet from summary.

Factor in higher renovation budgets due to rising material & labor costs.

One place that we have had good luck is at Restore, especially if you only need material for a smallish area.  

I work over 50 hours a week selling cars with a rotating schedule so its tough to start part time as an agent and continue my full time job.  

If you are considering starting a direct mail campaign in order to find leads and create deals then hopefully this will help you.You need to drive for neighborhoods that you want to buy in and look for properties that will be tough for the owner to sell if they ever need to sell.

The cost to correct the issues and bring it to market standards is say $30,000, that's just material costs.

That's a tough one..I'm not sure how you can use the legal system to get them out of the house if you're not the owner and you don't have a written agreement with him.

I will have $35k into it, $3k for auction fees, about $3K in materials and labor for minor repairs and paint.  

This just mitigates the risk that a renter will expose the material to too much moisture because they aren't going to be as conscious about it as a homeowner may be.