Lastly this is a sad case Morris with his background could have been one of the larger resellers of rentals in the US no doubt right up there with the other big resale companies we all know about..

You should be focused on buying a house a month, not reselling appliances on craigslist. 

And it sure doesn't sound like you had the intent of holding that property for productive use and your intent was primarily to resell so a 1031 exchange is out.  

Either buy the cheapest house you can be happy in and invest the rest -or- buy, repair, resell every 5 years.  

This fed on itself and accelerated a downturn into a crash.I listened to an interview with the CEO of a company that just rides real estate cycles buying large parcels of land during busts and reselling them during the next boom.

I know which one I would choose...I am in an incredibly hot market, I recognize the value of being able to close on a property and then resell it at a higher price.

They improve neighborhoods and resell individual homes to 1st time buyers at a fair price.Gotta be a way to better optimize many of the vacant and underutilized housing stock out there. 

Right after when the next 'correction' hits will be the BEST time to BUY and HOLD the NOTES on single family residences, reselling them as LPs and LOs, or you could also keep them as long term rentals. 

Buyers purchase something, the agent plays the role of the cheerleader, and then the new owner fails to turn profit and resells the property at a loss of time/energy/money after 6 months.

I said to my guy hey let me check this may not standup when you go to resell.. sure enough he would not have been able to get title insurance going forward under that scenario.