The pricing there is sky high especially manhattan beach, el segundo, and up into santa monica areas.The other thing you can do is  use a stated income program, but this only works if you have some sort of self employment, 700 min fico score, 25-30% down, and lots of cash reserves.

Maintain my credit score 2.

Now, I don't have that in writing, but with my credit score and income, I was assuming a lower rating.

My credit scores range from 580 to 650 what type of mortgage products are available?

Hi,I would like to get feedback from fellow investors about how you find and locate the best deal out there on SF, MF for long term hold or flip.Possible avenues that i can think of are, search RE engines (ie; Redfin,...

The podcasts and posts on the forums have been very valuable to me thus far and definitely steering me down the right path, and hopefully sooner rather than later I'll be scoring my first deal!

There are many different aspects of a person to consider, sometimes it's not as easy as going by numbers and you'll need to look at it on a case-by-case basis.Some of the aspects to look at are:-Get a credit report (not just score, but find out if they have any collections, etc.)

With $12k, a decent income and credit score, you could get a multi-unit for $150k (In my market at least). 

You can write your own loan, it's faster without problems and you know the money is there.Even if you are approved, there are other things and people that can stop your deal;  an underwriter looking only at your paper work, an appraisal, the the car loan you just got, your credit score going down for some reason ..... 

Schools are scored at a 9 out of 10 and a block from where this house is a SFH sold for just over 250k.