we worked through the old owner and tried to get to the kids when ever possible.. all leads were leads until the logs were on the ground.. a few things we did to speed things up  were as posted above and pretty obviouswe set up 1031s  but hard to sell to an 80 year old who could not fathom how that could be legal.and a few did charitable remainder trusts  probably even more complicated and the ones' where we bought those deals I would say the sellers were pretty savvy folks not your typical tree farmer. so as many have stated whats the sellers best interest and your best interest is many times vis a vi taxation not aligned in any manner.

It’s going to be my first flip or wholesale either way and since I’m still learning it’s a bit scary since I need to get more up to speed on wholesaling before going that route.

Kick each if your STR platform calendars into a common Google calendar and let that be the determinant for availability for each of the channels where you can control the sync/update speed you need.

If the market is going down the lender will speed up the process to mitigate loss (sometimes).

You need to really speed it up before the redemption period expires. 

Something about that clock makes time speed up!

What are the strategies I can use to speed up this snow balling effect? 

If I were doing this today, I would offer high speed internet and use of a printer.

You will want to consider the transaction fees, annual fees, speed of processing, customer service and knowledge. 

The high speed rail in California may open up a lot of affordable housing in far flung areas to lower income people helping to alleviate the problem temporarily.