Although I am outside of my comfort zone and feel like an absolute tool (I'm lost and that's uncomfortable), my faith, drive, and want to achieve my family and life goals continues to motivate me to get outside of my comfort zone and push for continuous improvement.  

This of course depends on your starting bank roll - but if its like mine (under 100k) - Im trying to put as little as possible into it on top of initial equity and fees.this will likely chew a big hole in your ROI  (now if you are looking to improve value with a cash out refi or a great prospect comes along that needs combo new plumbing, roof, windows, foundation repair, etc - well just make sure you know what youre getting into and/or have a good contractor and finger on the pulse of the market when estimating the ARV YOURSELF - couple missed items and you risk having a bad first investment and not doing it again).    7) dont be scared be ambitious ( i should heed my own advice sometimes) 8) define numbers goals within your target areas.  

I would need to figure out the building and land, mortgages, contributions, improvements and such.

What you are not including is vacancy, capital improvements, turnover costs etc.

To what extent does landscaping typically add value to a property for the purposes of appraisal and re-financing, compared to other improvements? 

But I also sometimes think owning only 1 property in LA would be less stressful and a more reasonable mortgage payment would improve my quality of life.

Ideally AI could improve the property analytics that shape listing prices, a competitive advantage over other brokers.

In my case, I wasn’t sure my land qualified because it was essentially my back yard, but because it was always a separate lot from my house, I was able to still do it because raw land without improvements on it is always considered investment property.

But as some one who was raised in this business has owned 3 brokerages I can tell you that only 10 to 20% of agents make 80% of the revenue wash out rate is high.. with Wholesaling I suggest that only 5 % who try it are still doing it in a year and in any given market there will be a handful of wholesalers that do pretty good to very good the rest just trundle along now granted if they make 50 to 100k a year in the mid west and were used to making 20 to 30k in their JOB this is a big improvement over where they were at..

One of the things you can start doing is reviewing your credit score and work on improving it if needed.