I remember one guy in the S.F.Bay area that found a site for a new Pepsi plant when Pepsi was unable to find one and made a very large finders fee, his mistake he got involved in the deal to far instead of stopping at the introduction phase and the Pepsi lawyers used that to not pay his finders fee, but only waiting until it was almost time to pay him and the deal was basically done.

Should I wait until I’ve purchased the property, or start once I’ve decided on the target market and city?

The local insight you mentioned can be a real advantage.

Does that get rid of any reason to do the latter things you mentioned?

I will now that you mention it.

You need to look for a Securities Attorney (not a real estate attorney)As @John Sayers mentioned, you can get ownership with a GP by doing other things, like bringing the deal, asset management, data research, etc.

Realtors should be buying properties to MTR for clients while they wait either way.

We debate selling it all the time but we know homes in CA usually always increase in value and it is just a waiting game and we can’t sell it right now and make a profit yet.

Therefore, you could say something like "taxes aren't based on your cash flow," but if I were making such as statement, it would be more like "taxes aren't DIRECTLY based on your cash flow" because that better captures the spirit.You have multiple sets of numbers: 1) [actual] cash flow, 2) net income, and since you mentioned running numbers 3) pro forma numbers (i.e., projected/estimated cash flow). 

Each day like I mentioned is $5.