Hey Jimmy, congrats on starting out on your investment journey!

Your immediate circle and Facebook group are a place to start.

You can go to the meter at 4:00am measure the usage for an hour and see what the waste is assuming it is running.

Maybe the current tenants don't care, but if they are also below market rents and you start bumping their rents, will it be opening the door for more complaints or increased likelihood of them leaving because they are being impacted by the smoker.  

I have included a slide on cost segregation analysis and how our interior design work can help to support with the owner's material participation hours and furnishing, upgrades to the property, including landscaping can all factor into that analysis. 

I plan on starting to attend some here as I am sure many local SoCal people invest out of state.

Start by reading the Ultimate Real Estate Investing Guide: https://www.biggerpockets.com/guides/ultimate-real-estate-investing-guide/introduction2.

I'm just getting started and putting things together.

Not starting with STRs sooner.  

I started out active and found that I was not great at being an asset manager and finding quality property managers was a huge struggle.