Hope to be more active and ask a lot of questions to the community as I start going about this journey. 

Here's my situation, I was going to start a position as a project engineer this upcoming Monday with an annual salary of $72,000.

Two of them I tried to place them on Section 8, but they get rented before that happened.

This is the #1 issue that most of the operators I work with have issues with.A strong maintenance process means you have a CRM with all your people, a basic understanding of rates, contracts in place, and backups. 

Start with BiggerPockets Ultimate Beginners Guide (free).

I have started to work directly with the city to get approval to construct multiple duplexes on the property, a surveyor/engineer, and an architect finishing the plans.

I am here in southern California and homes are still selling in less than 2 weeks.The agents that price the homes correctly will get multiple offers and sell in less than 2 weeks.The agents that price the home extremely low for marketing purposes will get 20 offers on a home.I tend to price the home slightly higher than the market and see if any buyers will bite, if not we typically adjust the price down over a course of 30-60-90 days down to the price where we start to get showings and offers. 

This way, you build equity right from the start.

The area has been untouched but has gas lines and electrical and is surrounded by a solar farm.My question is, where do I start?

Petersburg area in FL (also looking a bit in Sarasota), and upon some initial digging, we've determined that these could be potentially solid areas to start our real estate portfolio.