To me, an ethical wholesaler must have:1) Intimate pricing knowledge of the market he/she works in. 

I am very pleasantly surprised at how much sausage got made in this thread.

The work is a lot more pleasant and the income is over 3 X what I made as a Realtor.  

In times where I may need to move quickly to liquidate, I can do so successfully without worry of default, bankruptcy, short-sale or foreclosure because I refinance based on rental metrics and not present-day value.For me, that is the only flaw I've read in the argument and may or may not be what Anish was meaning.  

The call was pleasant (No cuss words or threats, etc. from him, that he typically does).

At some point in time the lender is entitled to recoup the property and "hoping" to take advantage of the situation even longer is mighty greedy.  

I was pleasantly surprised how detailed it is.

However, at some point I dropped tax liens and associated investment from my portfolio because (1) the vastly different nature of the investments depending on state and even municipality (2) the crazy amount of competition resultant from the publicity being generated (3) the decreased ROI of available tax certificates (4) the time required to research what could turn out to be a relatively small sum invested and (5) superior returns available in our other investments.I came to the conclusion that tax lien/certificate investing can be very profitable IF the investor gained intimate knowledge of the procedures in a particular state AND gained knowledge of property valuations in that geographical area AND had sufficient capital to invest to make all the “legwork” worthwhile.  

@Luke Ostergaard I've been pleasantly surprised by Avail.

The problem I run into working these deals without an investor's backing is either 1) an offer doesn't come in time to postpone the foreclosure or 2) the ready, willing, and able buyer walked while waiting.