IT kinda freaked me out that I might make the wrong choice, so it propelled me into a massive quest for investing education.

Basically it's set up as 2 condos instead of a multi-family so no one could get a mortgage to purchase the whole thing.We were able to come in with a substantially lower bid since we can pay cash. 

It basically comes down to what return you can earn investing real estate and what your interest rate is.If your interest rate is 7 percent and you can earn 12 percent doing REI is it worth it?

Just some basic information would be amazing to have, like inventory, average days on market, etc.

Don't go out of your comfort zone just to get a good deal, most auctions are basically site unseen sales with no contingency period, the less you buy in this way the less successes you have to offset a potential loss. 

It's impossible to hold schedules in CA anymore unless it's very basic.

My long term real estate goals are basically two fold; to grow into full-time construction and use those resources to obtain long term cash flow for retirement. 

Also providing basics like coffee, tea and water really help with perceived value thus you can charge a little extra as not all places offer that.

Basically just as everyone here so far has mentioned.

After amassing >$500,000 in rental assets you might put them into an LLC4.