@Kelly Williams Occasionally if you know your market really well and have a responsive Realtor you may come across a steaming hot deal that for whatever reason no one else sees or that you can get an inside edge on.

@Ashley Pimsner, We run into this occasionally. 

Occasionally..... we FB the owner.

Now, as long as I check in occasionally to make sure expenses are going in the right category, I can easily total up certain types of expenses.

I guess it can happen but as real estate goes I think this is by far the hardest thing to put together sustain and be profitable at.. other than a side hustle make some money occasionally if you darn lucky type thing.. folks I know that do this successfully spend probably 100 to 200k Minimum a year in mailers ALONE  and they have teams that door knock that get paid and Very robust back end systems.. etc etc.. this is a capital intensive business to do right.. 

Car prowls happen fairly regularly as reported by people on nextdoor.com, often when stuff left visible, and there are occasional burglaries.   

We have our attorneys foreclose in these cases (with an occasional DIL).

I can tell stories of what so called wholesalers did to people that totally fubared them.. ( the owners) I still occasionally see con artist people still doing this rent-back scams with people in pre-foreclosure.

I will try occasionally but end up putting it on MLS and offering the selling broker their fee.. 

There will be small dents created occasionally, as simple wear and tear.