Certain, uncertainty (variety), significance, or love/connection.  

Here, you should be able to meet all varieties of large and small private/hard money lenders.

Get a deal that is worth buying under contract and you will be able to sell it.In my experience when someone "can't find a buyer" it simply means the deal is not a good as they think it is for a variety of reasons.

For a variety of reason, I'd much rather focus on heading in that direction, rather than worrying about the past.@ John Santero - thanks for the positive vibes!

A tiny bit of due diligence would have revealed the situation.  

But you’ll find a variety of every type of investor on the site, and everyone is amazingly helpful.

Be productive by reading legal and business papers (they are full of leads),  review expired listings daily (make offers on all expired listings in your investing area) , call for sale by owners, make offers (use a skinny contract of sale, it is easy to read and understand - one page), run ads in local papers and on the internet, look at houses or commercial properties every day, understand and use an APOD (annual property operating data form), this form will reveal the accurate NOI.

They should be able to offer you a wider variety of loan products.

You can find deals in a variety of ways, depending on how much money you DO have.Like any business venture the ones that cost the least, take up the most of your time. 

However; every area of southern California is different, and have a wide variety of time frames for getting through planning, which could mean being out a huge amount of money while you're waiting.