Welcome @Bryant Cheely,@Brandon Turner told me that I should put 'la' in my keyword alerts in order to get notified about Los Angeles oriented posts.

It seems like you're a pretty goal oriented person, great!

For rentals your money will go twice as far in the more typical rental areas, and I'm not talking about ghetto neighborhoods, just decent first ring suburban neighborhoods that are more rental oriented.

I also have some dealings in another industry that's totally unrelated to real estate, but it is project oriented.

Making offers and dealing with sellers/buyers is a sales oriented career path. 

On the RE side, I'm long-term buy-n-hold, not short term flipper ... my understanding is that HML tend to be more oriented towards short term flipper type borrowers.Good explanation or "perfectly good" ... it seems similar to the RE side in that there are a variety of ways to obtain a discount on a house.

Small service oriented businesses are very difficult to value, much has to do with the personality of an owner, their knowledge, experience, work ethic and other factors that may not be valued by another person. 

I would say that, in my experience, there is the probability of smells and urine stains coming back after the rug has been shampooed.

The paperwork can be really tedious so finding a contractor that's done one before and is detail oriented is KEY to getting through it without an ulcer.

Thank you all for the much-needed advice.I have agreed to buy area rugs for the entire condo and put soundproofing foam under it.Hopefully seeing that I've put up the $600 expense will show those people that I am willing to work with them and they will back off.