You can purchase through a brokerage account with much smaller minimums.

All in (purchase + rehab) for 70-80% of ARV is pretty doable.

But we want to get into house flipping and have started looking at the listings here to find investors and properties.My question here is if we are in escrow and we find a property and an investor and get in escrow there, how would that affect the purchase of our new home?

I would assume the purchase contract has a clause that states title is clean and there no encroachments.

Looking at purchasing small 3 BR 1 BA house.

Though DSCR gives you a better picture of how the property is projected to perform vs debt service, you can't rely solely on one measure to make a purchase decision. 

We want to purchase a property to begin building our rental portfolio but are unsure of the best approach.We live in Sonoma County, California, and I work in Healdsburg.

We source and purchase all finish materials for our projects (lights/plumbing fixtures/etc). 

We also have a very strong rental market, and that too has high demand from investors wanting to purchase. 

I recently purchased my first duplex in Peoria, AZ in September and I am using it as a house hack where I rent out one side and live in the other.