Start working your network and tell everyone you know about what you are doing to start attracting private money lenders.

If its not a huge rental market, your rent needs to be much lower to attract renters.

Not to toot my own horn or self-promote, but I actually think it's a really good book: NOT Your How-To Guide to Real Estate Investing: Life Lessons on Hacking Your Mind Before You Hack Your Wallet by... me :)Consider it a prerequisite to all the REI how-to guides you could read.

Using leverage will make most deals more attractive.

Having $12K gross coming in from other tenants could be enough to cover a decent amount of your housing expenses and have your tenants pay off the majority of your PITI; therefore helping pay down your principal which builds your equity.Something walkable to restaurants/bars and close to all of what the Bay Area has to offer will be your best chance of attracting strong tenants with stable incomes and rental history.

Take out the bad/unattractive stuff and put in the good/attractive stuff

All that does is attract people from other apartment complexes that don't even live there to play hoops.  

The attraction to flipping is that you can make a lot of money in a relatively short period of time. 

I am more attracted to the SF with permits, found one recently close to Ali Dr just over $700k that had a permit.

We are just now working on an inner-city unit to see what kinds of tenants we attract.