Unfortunately doing this on the side of an already demanding full time job makes it more difficult to participate in something like wholesaling. 

Didn't think of that on the buying side.  

@Cameron York  any reason you don't want to simply buy performing notes and skip all the brain drain and associated risk and time it takes to do the NPN.from my personal point of view the only reason someone would do NPN is if the had a lot of money and time... because some will be winners and many like talked about up front will be 100% losers.so you need to income average as it were and that takes volume.wereas performing notes done correctly have less than a 5 to 6% default rate and you can make pretty nice returns and sleep well.. and not waste all the time and drama on the NPN side of things.If your going to the Portland BP meetup next Tuesday I will be there we can discuss a little more if you like...

My wife has been in prop management for most of her adult life and is a regional manager for a large company so I plan on using her skills on the management side (why didn't we do this much sooner!!).

Commercial real estate brokerages get contacted often.Over the years I have wasted time with agents saying they wanted to transition or start out with commercial.Some are working full time jobs or part time and trying to do real estate transactions on the side.

We bought a duplex, renovating it, and then living on one half while renting out the other side.

Unless you only want one or two properties to have a little side income coming in, you need to have a healthy market for your units. 

If anyone has any information on where we can do some research to find out which neighborhoods are "hot" or moving pretty quickly, we would really appreciate any advice!

Just to be on the safe side, I would suggest you consult legal counsel to get a definitive answer regarding this, but if you'd like to read the civil code pertaining to security deposits you can do so by following the link below:http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_disp...Hope this helps and good luck!

On a side note, I actually make MORE money when I have turn over...