@Dennis HertzlerGood luck on the new venture.  

I'm excited about my new venture and am grateful for all the information and inspiration.  

What was suggested to us is that you find a joint venture partner who also flips houses and you can fund each others project for the same amount, that way, both of you are vested for equal amounts.

At this point in the middle of hurricane season, I would venture to say Citizens will be the only one to insure it.

Due to this, our venture as new home flippers, that we started this past week for the very first time, will be pretty difficult.

( $40MM [sales volume] x 1.5% [your commission] = $600k x 90% [your split with broker] = $540k [gross commission] - $40k [marketing & expenses] = $500k [total compensation for 80 list side sales] )You'd definitely be leaving a boatload of cash on the table going down to 5% or 4.5% and paying the buyer's agent 3% but I'd also look at it from a standpoint of building a great relationship with a developer, getting your own brand out there for future business and building a name for yourself, and generating referrals from the relationships you'll make via this particular venture.

Good luck with your venture(s). 

As the title states, I am 24 years old, living in Southern California, and motivated to start my venture into REI.

I've just checked out Rich Dad, Poor Dad from my local library to read as it seems to have played a critical role in kickstarting a lot of people's real estate ventures. 

You would have to have silly amount of cash like hundreds of thousands or you would have to do very very risky things like venture capitalism, IPOs, option trading and all that (which is quite impossible for a young college dropout).