Having maintenance people who can get work done cheap, yet not sacrafice quality.

Familiarize yourself with plumbing materials quality ratings and cost.Their are many ways to join a pipe, learn to notice the most professional look.Look more closely at insulation materials and see the different quality standards.

Its a fine line we have to walk on to not spend much but keep quality tenants so 2 Questions:1) How does an Investor/Landlord control spending habits?

Acutally, we will probably be moving out of there here soon (and turning our house back into a rental again) but by owning most of the houses on the street it will help us keep a 'standard' for the street and help keep everything looking nice.

If I look to neighborhoods on the next "quality" notch above those I've been buying in, the houses that I could get $800 a month rent on would cost more like $70-$90K instead of $30-$45K.

Just to get it up to our standards.

A very general rule of thumb is that if the tenant does something that causes the landlord to spend money, and the reason for the expense is due to more than standard wear and tear, the expense can be passed on to the tenant.

You also need to take into account if your competition is waving the security deposit for qualified applicants,charging a pet fee or not,paying for any water,sewer,trash for the tenant included in the rent,including appliances,or giving a rent credit on move in, and many other factors.Rent rates can look good until you see how many landlords you are competing with,quality of the product,and incentives given driving down the net rent before debt service and depreciation.

I am certainly not down on wholesaling, and it is certainly not dead in this market, in fact, if you know how to lock up great deals, it can be a great source of income for you.I work in higher price point market areas (southern CA) and as such, my standard wholesale fee on a regular deal is around $10k, and I have made as much as $40k on deals in the past, it all depends on what the market will bear and how good of a spread you locked up in the first place.

And then there's the quality of the wanna-be-renters.