Worlds most liveable city ;-)There are certainly tons of deals in numerous states within the US where you would easily achieve a $5k per month passive income from rentals. 

Anywhere convention where the focus is on quantity and not quality is a waste of time. 

But I represent numerous developers and builders in this market that do exactly what I described. 

I agree with @James Wise, you don't want to compete like that.I've always been an advocate for quality over quantity and Redfin is purely the latter. 

Zillow will probably follow the same strategy since they have to think in terms of high quantities to make share holders any money.

There are numerous meet ups both focusing on areas North and South.

I would say that all of the numerous methods we use to find deals work, just track what you're doing so you can review and figure out how you need to tweak things going forward.

I've had numerous friends and colleagues offer me substantial amounts of money to invest (in one case $1M) and have finally decided to take a serious look at combining some of my funds with my friends and colleagues to purchase an apartment complex. 

I have read numerous times that you shouldn't invest in California real estate (you can buy 4 properties in the midwest for the price of 1 in CA) and that you should never invest in a city that has no industry or a declining population.I live in the mountains of Northern California, very "middle of nowhere".

Going full-time with numerous clients is a different beast when it comes to marketing, etc, but it doesn't sound like you necessarily want to scale that side of things.When you add in the fact that I was able to save 2.7% on the acquisition price and 3% of the re-sale price on every rehab project we completed (30+ properties/60+ transactions over 4 years), I came out way ahead.