Stay away.There are numerous REIA and Meetups in the Baltimore Washington area that are free or almost free where you can immerse yourself in the industry. 

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. 

Is it for a down payment or to facilitate other investing activities?

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

@L S I have also seen mention on hear of using a method where it sounds 'similar' to a 1031 but the facilitator hold the property for YEARS (I think determined by the seller/buy) and makes yearly payments to the seller. 

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".

After my team and I fixed and sold a fixer-upper my team and I want to use the proceedings to acquire a commercial property valued at $340,000 that generates a good NOI but I have no relationship with any of the banks nor credit unions here in the Phoenix valley.we have the 20% DP readyCan anyone recommend a bank or credit union who facilitates this types of commercial loans.Thanks in advance