I am ok to see the contractor make money , but the cost savings have to be shared and the contractor should clearly educate and say that - it is a reasonable compromise and that we would save some time and also see some price saving .Coming to the point of worrying about mechanics lien and moving on . the home owner need not be always be worried about mechanics lien , its an instrument to genuinely protect contrcators who were not paid , it doent mean that every contractor can put a lien on every property .

A note and DOT may require a judicial action in some states but is usually a non-judicial process, so many investors may simply assume that in the wosrt case, a judicial process may be required and price any instrument accordingly.

What confuses me most about these second position mortgages would be who holds legal title if both the security instruments are deeds of trust?

So after a couple weekends when I didn't have spare time I decided to automate and this is when I got serious about things. 

Taking yourself out of the equation and automating is great option and of course necessary to scale.

Process first, automation where it makes sense second.

Since my SFR is in a higher price range, I'm also planning on requiring tenants to pay via Dwolla, as referenced here: http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2014/02/26/how-to-automate-rent-collections-dwolla/.

@Mike D'Arrigo I clearly stated in my previous post that out of state investing works for" some" people the pros and cons have been discussed many times on BP and the OP can do his own due diligence and make his own decisions.There are aspects of Real Estate other than Cash Flow, and there are other investment instruments outside of Real Estate where one can achieve cash flow.

Never had a problem with consolidated operations, for example in mortages, the were mortagage originations and brokerage, lending private money, purchasing and sale of notes, appraisal of mortgages and financial instruments, and loan servicing operations, all under one company.

Automating the process would be ideal as we have social media sites, blogs, website all to update