I’ll probably be nosing around the forums some, so please bear with me and any silly questions.

If you can handle that, then yes, it can be a good deal: bearing close to downtown and coming in at a lower price point. 

Just bear in mind...you will probably operate in a grey zone (unless you open a business and get the licenses, which most people don't care to do) and obviously need quite some cash to get started seriously.

I am looking at pockets of areas around Kirkwood highway, Route 13 Newcastle closer to bear which is growing and pockets of Wilmington.

Load bearing vs non load bearing etc.

I would pull the 500K, to then monetize through yielded interest bearing markets, then pledge those yields to acquire the purchase power for the planned various down payments  

Same goes for number of LLCs and what to fund them with, since bear in mind that CA tends to be more cumbersome and expensive to have LLCs than other states.California is generally more cumbersome than other states when it comes to taxes and filings.

The demand and what the market will bear- fluctuates quite a bit more than I had realized.

Dropping the price by another $10,000 to $15,000 could help get it closer to what the market can bear

I would t go much lower unless you can estimate rehabbing accurately or bear in mind the asset class to vacancy and other variable cost issues rising.