@Ben M.I would not reccomend buying second hand materials.

With me being a wholesaler they said they could find the property get it under contract on my behalf and even find a buyer for it before handing the deal off to me.

I googled what a notice of trustee sale is, and from the impression i got, at this point the property is already handed over to the lender who is waiting for the auction date to come. 

If there is no specific requirement, I would get the lease sign and streamline the process. 5 - Typically you do the move-in inspection with them and then hand them the keys. 

My main interest is to buy a handful of properties, live in one and rent a couple out for a secondary source of income.

However, I just want to caution you against getting into the habit of hand-waving whenever someone brings up an expense you don't have in your calculations, saying "eh, don't worry about it; I have enough cash flow to cover it."

Not sure how much you are looking into getting for the flip, but I don't wouldn't want to put in that much work for only a bit of cash.Of course I do not know what the actual comps are in the area since I am not in your market nor actually have a Realtor's CMA analysis in hand.

I'm asking this both for the situation at hand, and for future reference.

On the one hand the tenant ticked me off in terms of how she left my property without notice and hasn't taken any responsibility in working with me outside of legal proceedings so pretty happy to stiff her with the full amount. 

Are you concerned about point breeze becoming a bubble soon, I feel like renters are going to have the upper hand in negotiations if there is too much supply.