I can bring value to your business by: answering leads from advertising; showcasing properties and handling tenants' issues; sweeping/cleaning; or even (immaculately) handwriting direct mail letters...

That way I or my business partner in the LLC can handle the property management for all the properties.By breaking them up, we could always do the property management for him for a fee, but then that would entail being a PM for someone else and taking on whatever additional liability or costs that entails in Maryland.It’s definitely sounds cleaner to break them up.

Im a small company so cant handle months of holding cost if I can help it. .Realtors and Investors tell me to wait about a year(almost there) & people will start buying them again, so your time frame may be perfect!  

There are loans outside of FHA that can handle both the hard money loan and the refi.

If I find a fsbo, I loop my realtor in for a flat fee or % (just to handle on the back end, something like 2% or at least $1k). 

There are plenty of tips and tricks out there but in the end for STR's it all comes down to creating a valuable experience for your guests....all success flows directly from that but you can certainly increase your bottom line by optimizing processes and reducing costs when possible.  

However, (and this is only if it's possible) that may improve your negotiation position to close on the house.I know you mentioned that you want the seller to handle. 

BUT I have been looking at fixers... where 6 moths would only really be a month or 2 longer than the flip time anyway... and in that last couple months, I will rent it out, seriously reducing or eliminating holding costs....

So, there are a couple issues, and I want to make sure I handle this in the best way possible.1) Should I allow the friend to stay at all?

My thoughts are that by setting all the low cost/free marketing efforts in place it allows me to tweak my system for handling leads before I increase the volume.