And my only point to that was IF you have a buyer's agent bringing short sales from a listing agent you are now eating pretty deep into profits.

Said he has been doing this 30 years and we are on the same page anyways ... red flags already.

My question is now that I am actually looking, I am trying to find a list of red flags that would cause me to not even consider a certain house.

Of course, there are still those who developed deep contacts and resources and continue to flip.

There are some key observations that could work in my favor, or could be red flags that I'm too naive to avoid. 

the tax cert sales I went to in the deep south .. 10,000 certs were being sold in 2 days// I could see the pro's in the back of the room with their lap tops etc.but I guess the on line over the counter stuff is what your talking about.

However; I'm relocating back to Redding where I own property, have family, and it was hit extremely hard by the fire with over 1000 homes destroyed and others damaged.

I think the rest might just be deep deep cleaning.

This stuff goes real deep.

Ivanka Trump tells a story about her father, in the middle of one of his periodic crashes and in deep debt, pointing to a homeless guy on the streets of NY and telling her that the homeless guy was richer than he was.