I know there is a lot of knowledge and wisdom to be gained by such a great community, so I was hoping to get some advice on a current deal I'm in contract with.

We're actually losing a bit overall, but considering the wealth of knowledge gained, I'd say it's worth the small price.

I am interested in flips and rentals only because I am not familiar with other strategies at this time,  as I continue to learn and gain confidence in what I am doing other strategies will be considered.

I figured that would be the best way to gain valuable experience. 

This would also be the preferred method if they paid less than $200k for the property as all those gains are tax free now but will be taxable after 2 years as a rental. 

Just make sure there's no pre-payment penalty and you get benefit of both worlds.

In most states, including TX, the owner must disclose the inspection to future buyers, by law, so he/she loses and the future buyer gets the benefit of my hard earned money. 

For example I know an agent that used to be a lender, so investors that don't have much lending knowledge could benefit from working with him.

The agent.A short sale is pretty much this in a nutshell1) Buyer is in trouble and sends hardship to bank2) Agent does analysis and comes up with price (Which is of course lower than what is owed to bank)3) Bank says, go ahead and put it on the market4) Somebody looks at house and puts in offer5) Seller accepts any offer that comes in because they want out (regardless of how much the bank loses)6) Bank takes weeks/months to pay for their own evaluation, look at how long on the market, run an internal appraisal, look and do a cost benefit analysis on the loan and property7) Bank accepts/counters or denys the offer (provided they decide to do anything at all and not just foreclose on the original borrower and take the house themselves)I have it happen monthly....

So if somebody owned a 1 Million dollar rental property and sold it outright, they'd pay cap gains on $1M.