Difficult area to find street parking, but no limitation on how long you can park once you do.- what if i were to convert the garage into a non-conforming unit?

Which is why wholesaling is much more attractive because it requires no start up money. you cannot successfully wholesale as its taught by on line courses or gurus if you have no money.. the successful wholesalers be them licensed or not spend THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS a month on lead generation.you could bird dog.. maybe with limited captial just gas and a phone and hope that you get paid. 

Since people pay a fair amount of taxes (similar to NY and CA) the least they expect is free of charge public services Here in LA people have to suffer a burdensome and highly dysfunctional planning administration asking ridiculous amounts of useless studies and documentation, charging insane fees for very bad services.Architects and owners have to deal with up to 10 different agencies with their own requirements, timeline, fees and applications, resulting in massive delays and costs over the roof.

My suggestion - pick up Garret Sutton's book: How to use LLC's and LP's - here's a link: https://www.amazon.com/How-Limited-Liability-Compa...

She’s got resources, but they’re limited.  

The 2018 second quarter RealtyRates Investor survey says that apartment cap rates are on average between 4.9-13.8 nationwide depending on LTV, but the survey is not limited to recent acquisitions and I assume that those that participate in the survey know what they are doing .So this bring me back to my question: for those who are actually set up to responsibly invest but don't have the experience or network to hit the 15% CoC returns in today's market where the pros are also claiming good deal are hard to come by, is shooting for the 5 cap cash purchase on their first deal to learn the ropes a crazy idea?

Your QI is not limited to a geographical location because 1031 is a federal statute that applies in all 50 states. 

@Derrick James Two suggestions for finding owner emails and phone numbers... 1. www.truepeoplesearch.com I primarily use this when screening tenant applicants, but it generally gives pretty good info.

For me, I own almost all of my properties free and clear, and have very little overhead, so I am totally happy taking on limited debt at better rates and earning a great residual cashflow and just reinvesting excess profits. 

Our properties are B class as well.We have found that applicants from other countries are very difficult to screen.