My wife and I would be responsible for all maintenance, keeping rent level constant, and eventually getting the down payment paid back.

Will a democratic administration eventually try to pass a national rent control?

Regardless, CA needs to clean up its act or else tech (and film) will eventually get fed up.

My realtor said that initially he thought the ARV for my building would only increase by about $60K but that if I held over the long term eventually I would get the value.

I plan to eventually transfer it into an llc I created once it is rented, and refinanced.

Our typical strategy is to purchase and renovate a property with cash (or Lines of Credit), stabilize it with good renters, then eventually refinance on a 30 year conventional for a more secure, long term investment hold.

If you start with some buy and holds, test out some GC's on maintenance / small work then you can start building a relationship with someone and eventually get full blown BRRRR's / Flips going.

My objective is to get enough passive income to eventually focus on investing and building myself as a business as my job/career instead of working for other people or companies.

I personally learned it by finding a local mentor, joining as a LP, learning the ropes and eventually graduating to the GP role.

My main goal is to identify an opportunity that can be scaled from a couple of spots to a dozen, to several dozen eventually without the need to completely re-design or re-engineer the layout without respect to providing utilities.