I also agree that a lot of wholesalers have no idea what they're doing, and that they start cutting corners when they realize it's not the get-rich-quick scheme that they were led to believe.

We've been utilizing biggerpockets' tools and have built our own excel spreadsheet to quickly analyze data-dump from mls reports. 

You will learn a lot quite quickly.

If so how quickly were they able to do it?

The markets are overpriced but homes do sell quickly.

I don't need a quick buck with these my hope is that over time the owners in this area come to me when they are ready to sell. 

We got in to see the house that afternoon, so quickly that the listing agent didn't even have keys to the place. 

A quick follow up question on this - I do have a small consulting / freelancing gig on the side and will be a 1099 income, but it will probably be less than $2K for this year.

That 5K could be eaten up quickly by repairs that were not visible up front, and then there is still the fact that there will be closing costs too that will consume that 5K (even flat fee listing on the resale with a 2.5% commission to buyer's agent will take more than 3K alone).Maybe this can work as a "subject to", but that is another topic - and it might not be a good candidate for that approach because you still have that big rehab number.

Also you can't just make a scheme of owning 1% or something to get around it.. state will sniff that out quickly.