despite the building inventory in some of SoCal there are other areas where building permits are nearly non-existent.

Do that for awhile until you get more comfortable with the process and make enough connections to consider quitting a good job to enter a competitive field where you may run out of inventory at some point in the future.What's going on with your two properties that is requiring so much work?

I'd suggest meeting with a lender now for 2 reasons.  1) You may be ready to go sooner than you thought.2) If you are not quite ready yet, they may be able to point out other things that you can work on along side of improving your credit.  

So it tough to nogotiate when they walk or improve product quality when there is no problem.   

I try to improve something every vacancy.  

I know for sure once you alert them they may want to come in and do walk through of the entire property to see what kind of improvements were made over the years that weren't taken into consideration.

Iv'e noticed there isn't a big inventory of 4 bedroom homes that are pet friendly.

The opportunity to sell and improve the quality of my portfolio had begun to outweigh the option of holding any longer.

Ideally we'd like the investor to get his money back + interest in 3-6 months and be able to leverage any tax breaks from the depreciation and repair (not improvements) BUT we don't want him to have his name on the deed or anything.  

Make sure you're improving your financial position now though.