All the best, Steven  If you're going to do a partnership or even a joint venture agreement I would highly suggest using a competent lawyer to draft your business agreement.

Colors, quality of paint, how much prep needed, holes patches etc. 

The quality of answers to your are directly correlated to the quality of your questions asked.  

The deduction is optimized as values increase and can potentially offset the entire net investment (including down payment) for high wage earners.

We've sold 65+ homes and the biggest request we get from our Buyers is help with closing costs.Most of our deals we're providing anywhere between $5K-$10K to help Buyers offset the cash requirement to purchase a home.Even in today’s "high" interest rate environment, many Buyers prioritize closing cost assistance over an interest rate buydown.

Some don't like the idea of a 2nd position lien that is very small and very high on interest rate. 

Did have high quality photos/ great listing title and description?

I've decided that finding "deals" in Arizona is unnecessary as there are other markets that one need not search high and low to find something that can produce a decent cash-on-cash return.

It seems to me that they all whether paid of free, will all have the same exact amount of houses because all the transactions are all public and so they seem to compete with each other based on the quality of the data of the houses, how up to date it is, and the user experience in configuring the how the layout is.

Without the high leverage you reduce the top source of return in CA RE which is achieve via the appreciation on a high leverage property.