I am looking for partners and rock-stars to develop a team.Plain and simple.

I pretty much paid retail price (I know, not ideal), but it was a good first purchase from outside the U.S. 

I used to say I am a real estate investor or that I owned a real estate investment company, but people either thought that I was a flipper or real estate broker. years back in ulta liberal Portlandia I could not tell people what I did.I was logging ( raping the forests)  I was building subdivisions ( big bad developer ) and I had a courthouse steps buying division ( kicking poor people out of their houses)  so I just said I was in real estate  LOL>  

I would love to get suggestions on what the best areas could be to look for a house with 3+ bedrooms (ideally much more), in the 500,000 range, that would be a high demand rental market, and of course walking distance to the train. 

@Brandon Swartwood I would recommend starting with the ULI Guide To Professional Real estate Development.

My friend is a real estate developer who has successfully bought, renovated and sold/rented out a few small apartment buildings in the area (I live in the Bay Area so there are plenty of 4-8 unit buildings).  

They do property development also so they are used to working with investors/developers.

Thus, the Department believes that in appropriate circumstances, owners and managers may develop and implement reasonable occupancy requirements based on factors such as the number and size of sleeping areas or bedrooms and the overall size of the dwelling unit.

You can look into working with distressed homeowners, scouring the MLS, marketing, and networking to ideally find leads.

Then take next best highest and use tenant and figure out rent per sq ft they could pay.You could possibly sell the land to an end user tenant, sell the land to a developer and make a spread, ground lease the land, or do a NN or NNN lease and construct the building.You need to analyze the tax implications of selling outright and paying higher short term gains capital tax versus developing and then converting to a new value created loan of 65 to 75% LTV.