The main lenders offering such loans will generally want to lend in excess of $50K in order to make it worth their time and effort.  

Im still in the researching stages but this tool would definitely be used by me.

So I guess taking into consideration the value of the property (at this stage we will only be doing one at a time and slowly increasing), a profit split of 50/50 would be fair?

Because if I just keep planning and preparing, I might never get out of the planning stage.

I would imagine your lender will review that language in the addendum and not be comfortable with loaning funds in excess of the sales price. 

I'm still in the beginning stages, but I am fired up and excited!

If I had hired a landscape company to come and mow my lawn (maintenance), prune one tree (maintenance) and plant some shrubs (improvement) and the invoice is $750 then I cannot use the De Minimis Safe Harbor as the invoice is in excess of $500 but if I had asked for an itemized breakdown of individual items on that single invoice, I could as long as each item is under $500? 

Now I haven't done any REI as I am still in the stage of soaking up as much knowledge as I can.

I'm a full time single working parent of two teenagers so I have very little excess time.

California is not an ideal market so I will be looking at different markets over the next few months and aim to start my next stage of investing in March / April 2015.I am new to out of state investing (and went to school at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo where the motto is "learn by doing") so I want to spend a minimum of a few months in my desired market, personally building my team and portfolio.