I understand that yellow letter campaigns and "riding the roads" can produce wonderful results in large cities.

3) I can't speak for other areas of CA obviously as I stated above having not yet even so much as visited the state - BUT - that same money you are talking about for a down payment on one property in SF could be used in many many other parts of the country to buy handfuls of property or decent sized apartment complexes (20-40 units), which very seriously will produce returns high enough to pay for that 2000$/mo mortgage and then some.

PM vs Turnkey - - sadly, there's various definitions for each here on BP.Some use turnkey to imply a company that sells properties with tenants in place producing a cash flow. 

Simply enter the property address and it will produce various public records related to it.

Those three variables were then scaled and combined to form a 'hotness score,' producing the top ten list."

My first and main goal here is to learn more about long term real estate investing through self direct IRA's, buying and holding income producing investment properties, building great relationships with other members. 

The property would need to be formally appraised and that value would be the taxable amount of the distribution (non-taxable in a Roth IRA).Generally, you are better off continuing to hold the property in the IRA and let it produce income that you can distribute, or sell the property and convert the IRA holdings to cash - which you can then distribute and/or reinvest as appropriate.If you had a stock portfolio, you would not sell the entire portfolio and take the cash out of the IRA the day you turn 59 1/2.  

Always blown away with helpfulness on the forum.I highly recommend listening to their podcasts (produced weekly) and attending the webinars hosted by Brandon Turner every Wednesday night. 

But see this is the thing - real estate investors will have to learn how to own rental properties (because rehabbing and wholesaling only produce active income not passive income) anyway if they want PASSIVE, RECURRING INCOME (right @Brandon Turner - which by the way, I got his latest book and it's awesome).

If they only had to write the envelope (typed letters) they had to produce 20 mailer/hour.