My advice:
You should concentrate on wholesaling first.
The most difficult part of the business is locating the motivated seller with equity (finding the deal) . After that, it's just a mechanical straight forward process to some kind of a profit. But that process for a flip can require substantially more capital than you currently have at your disposal and is full of pitfalls and learning experiences.
Just pretend that you have $200K at your disposal. Enough to close with cash. Hold and remodel with cash. Advertise and sell. Now, go find that 150K ARV deal with a motivated seller that owns it free and clear or has at least 70K in equity in the home. Try to understand his or her motivation to sell. Try to understand why he or she isn't simply listing it for sale with a realtor. Try to understand what is wrong with the property and estimate what it will take in time and capital to bring the house back to full market price. Try and insure that the property doesn't have some sort of defect ( lot, location, zoning, etc.) that will make it undesirable or difficult to sell in the future after rehab is complete. Once you are convinced that you have identified a pot of gold, take the TREC purchase contract to your seller and get it signed.
Now, since you are not in a cash position to do the rest of the deal. Simply take the deal to others that are. If you have done a good job and bought a good deal, then you are going to realize your profit immediately at close of ESCRO. Bring the contract with you to the next REI club meeting and see who wants the deal. If you did a good job, then you assign the contract to the Rehabber who is willing to pay you the most for it at closing and let them do the rest of the work to make the larger more difficult to obtain profit. On the other hand, if you made a mistake, and no one wants the deal, then you wait a few days and then contact the seller and tell them sorry but upon inspection you identified this, that or another thing and that you have decided that you no longer want the property.
Then simply repeat the process until you have enough cash to rehab your first property on your own.
You do this a few time and you will be ready when that lucrative Rehab property crosses your path and you won't have to have the added pressure of a hard money loan for your first deal. Nothing wrong with Hard money. It just would not be my first choice for someone new to the business.
