So basically my dad has offered to give me a massively big piece of the pie without a whole lot of risk on my end.  

There is a massive opportunity cost when you do the work yourself as oppose to contracting.

That happened to me in my past, I was sick of trying to find staging companies who weren't Investor friendly and were only in the mindset of retail sellers.

This forum is mainly for Real Estate discussions so I doubt many people have experience with direct mail for retail business.All I can say is that if you do it, keep the letters short and mail them consistently for at least 5 months.

In my experience, it is a very rare 100 year old house in Pittsburgh that has a subfloor rigid enough for installing tile, without a decoupling layer, or massive amounts of 3/4 inch plywood first.

However, when you pay retail for a big property counting on appreciation to make the deal right and then the appreciation stops - YOU'RE IN BIG TROUBLE!

I make it regular practice to teach my sellers about seller carry options and find out what their bottom line is for downpayments, who can more easily carry for a buyer as opposed to massive downpayments.

Most of the MLS data is scewed towards retail sales.

Do wholesalers make 10% of the retail value of a house ?

And take massive action to make money.You can have a LLC / S-Corp in a couple hours.