If the perks are not that beneficial, I would rather make my first short sale or wholesale deal and use the profits to pay for my own mortgage.

Provide the funds and watch 50% of the profits go right into your checking account once our property is sold.

My estimates had about 15-20k in profit in this deal.

seems like a $10k-15k profit seems pretty good for the amount of money you'll have invested.

Things go exactly as expected for the first 5 years, but then you have a terrible tenant and he does $5,000 of damage.In this instance, your entire profit for the entire 5 year period is wiped out and it will take you an additional 22 YEARS to make up the loss (assuming that you don't have any further losses - which is very unlikely).

We plan on forming an LLC, and for my efforts I'll recieve 25% of the profits.

I have been reading some flipping books and thought that the find it, buy it, flip it profit book by Kevin Meyers was one of those books that had a lot of good info.

I really really don't mind sharing any profits with any mentor/partners as long as I can get my foot in the door.

Were they profitable?

that may be true.but as an INVESTOR, what you're looking for is these same houses (maybe a bit more beaten up) that have lazy, absent, distressed owners - now you're talking a real reduction in price (and possibly value) of say 25 to 40k...now we're at 60kyou increase the value by making the improvements the former owner could/would not and selling it at a price below the others - say for this example comp'd houses list at 95k - you're selling for 89k for a 20k profit!