I am fairly new to BP, but have been eating up the podcasts, doing personal research, and working my way through a real estate book.

It's about learning how to buy wholesale from as many sources as possible and ensuring you have a lender who will refi when you're done rehabbing.

I have a guy that is fair so I mostly call.Plumbing past the fixture or soldering in a tight spot I call.

Lakshay,You should always require renters insurance.Remember to ensure that the ownership entity of the rental property is added as additional insured to the tenants renters policy.

I want to ensure, I protect my lender, myself, and the deal. 

How do I set this deal up so that I can ensure I make money as the finder?

It is probably cheaper than joining the apartment association and they would have the means to qualify a new tenant (credit, criminal, rental history, income) and ensure that the tenants are signing a lease that follows the laws in CA. 

Our family has a fair amount of experience in real estate and we are looking to jump in feet first! 

Our ultimate goal is to have around $1mil liquidity to be able to purchase our own land, build our own home, and still have a little bit of a buffer, while also having rental properties for our passive income.I know we could fairly quickly get to $1mil buy buying and selling but I wanted to know what you all thought about what a good roadmap might be regarding that (how many properties to buy and rent vs sell, etc).I have a friend who is very active in these forums who originally lived in Los Angeles and his first properties were basically in the ghetto of the middle of the US.Would a good route be to purchase apartments in the ghetto and be a slumlord for a while to launch our empire?

The hard money/private lender will want to see that your buying the property at a discount to ensure safety on his end and the less the discount the more money he will want you to put down.