Long story short, Hurricane Katrina caused materials to skyrocket, we ran out of construction money and used our own, the project ran long and pre-sale buyers bailed.  

Make sure you have all your ducks in a row, ie. permits, contractor, building material, staging, and investor friendly listing agent. 

It has a commercial sponsor, Brad Sumrok's Apartment Investor Mastery, and it is ultimately promoting his particular multifamily syndication coaching/training system out of Dallas.

@Maggie Jones A 150/sf in LA is doable, cheapest material out there, all finish items like flooring or tile will have to be under $1/sf, fixture is the cheapest you could find, faucets are $20/pc.

., try this: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/8121/51415-pro...They have deleted this on me before, they told me it had too many links to an outside site, like i was promoting it, i removed the links but left one recognition of who the author was, because i'm not taking credit for something i did not write, and yet they still delete it from the blogs, but it is on my list of blogs .

I've read much of Michael Blank's material, as well.

But remember if you rent you might invest in High Use High Abuse materials so you aren't constantly replacing every re-rent.  

South Coast Supply in Los Alamitos sells material for block fencing and can give very good/ reliable contractor references for the install.

If it is a trade you seek as opposed to a g/c or handy man, reach out to local custom homebuilders, the guys doing a few houses a year,  in general they like to promote the people who do good jobs for them.

I'm new to the game and have spent the last year or so learning as much as I can through BP and other reading materials.