Your contractor analogy is quite apt: just like a contractor pushing to close a high margin deal, you resort to a fear narrative to drum up business.

That if the most you would want to purchase the property for to make a profit, I believe the calculator puts in a profit margin of 15% of the ARV.

Typical wholesale deals I see come across my screen have very thin margins... 20-50k... you have to do volume if you are going that route.

(a 20% profit margin on a 100k flip is $20,000, but a 10% profit on a $1mm flip is $100k.  

But you keep on dredging up these sob-story examples of marginally competent self-managing landlords who are, surprise-surprise, being run out of business by COVID adversity.If you're going to self-manage down at the lower end of the property spectrum, you had better be made of sterner stuff than this lady.

Which is why calls to legalize street vending — which has, historically, required complex permit procedures (and often operated at the margins of the law) have been stepped up to promote economic recovery as the pandemic subsides.

The end result was always almost 2x the cost of a brand new single wide that typically came with a warranty vs a tiny home that the materials were marginally better and like others have stated serves a small fraction of the population. 

The new normal needs to be adjusted for our profit margins. 

I definitely see how the profit margins are minimized but I feel like it's a lot riskier if I decide to do this myself.

A quick rehab can work well with a tighter margin.