Setting that aside, I don't believe its realistic to buy a home and turn around and flip it without making any improvements.

The Real Estate business in general can be learned by meeting and having a local 'mentor' walk you through things...classes, seminars, and the like are great "motivators" and open your eyes to new ways to do things, give you energy and connect you to others in the space.

In my case, I wasn’t sure my land qualified because it was essentially my back yard, but because it was always a separate lot from my house, I was able to still do it because raw land without improvements on it is always considered investment property.

I think it will be worth your while to untangle this but it probably will go more efficiently once you get beyond the feeling that this woman is a lunatic.

What you are not including is vacancy, capital improvements, turnover costs etc.

One of the things you can start doing is reviewing your credit score and work on improving it if needed.

The cost of energy is heavily subsidized.  

Let someone else buy the fringe areas and improve them first.To be direct, I can't imagine an appraiser using 5-year-old comps.

But I also sometimes think owning only 1 property in LA would be less stressful and a more reasonable mortgage payment would improve my quality of life.

Ideally AI could improve the property analytics that shape listing prices, a competitive advantage over other brokers.