Hi @Nicholas L.We are sourcing our deals through a combination of resources.

There aren't many co-ops in Southern California, mostly in LA or a senior community in Orange County, but there's not much of a discount between condos and co-ops - at most, 10%.What is your source of the 10% difference data?  

But as was mentioned above, you need expertise and experience.For the first 2-3 years of activity investing in real estate, I had to use my own money sources for down payments.

PS is revolutionary because of how it has simplified access to all of the various data points investors need to make a decision and because of this its extremely popular.You do not want to be using a popular lead source to increase deals because everyones chasing the same deals.And nothing will change with there data because there business model forces them to have to buy and license the data they get which means waiting for the county/databroker to send it to them which guarantees anyone using PS data will be behind the counties, only getting a fraction of the leads and getting those late leads the same time as everyone else.How do you get access to the leads first.

The #1 reason that landlords fail is due to failure to manage to the lease (Source: American Apartment Owners' Assn). 

Instead of having to source a rehabber house, figure out how to do rehab when they have zero experience at it. and then trying to find a HML to do the loan up front ( if thye dont have the cash) and a take out lender.  

Perhaps if your partner was a general contractor or handyman type there may be some merit there to reduce costs / increase profitability.If your partner enjoys deal sourcing, a better move might be for him to become an agent - so he could legally collect commissions from finding deals and managing properties for multiple people. 

Both are excellent platforms which save people immense amount of work and tme by compiling all the critical data you need in 1 place but there leads are way behind the county recorders/courts/notices i.e the source of most motivated seller leads.

Real estate investing has been a passion of mine for time with my mother also having invested early on where I likely have gotten the love and desire to follow similar foot steps.I have taken last 6 months to educate myself and currently own a single family home as primary residence and would like to expand to multi family properties (2-4 units) for additional stream of income, not to mention potential tax benefits for long-term investing.Based on current living situation, I have a fair amount of equity established in my primary residency along with having enough cash to either pay off house completely or use towards investing in a multi family property.Given that I'm the sole source of income for our household with my wife being the home maker for our two kids under 2, trying to weigh out risks with getting started now or perhaps waiting. 

If you were limited in cash reserves atleast you'll have the HELOC as a 2nd or 3rd back up source of funds to weather storms.