Local meetups, and local networking is your best bet in getting started out.

I'll bet they let you in, then inspect the furnace and all the ducts. that will probably get you inside.

The net population growth is downward, but I'd bet the areas near highways, near the T, and closer into the city have generally done well, and will continue to appreciate.Know your market I guess.

Is Google the best bet?

Best bet is a dumpster and call it a day but if you know of junk collectors they will haul anything of value for free. 

I'd bet none of the stick built houses will.

Then again I am not familiar with LA rental market but I bet for 1000 sqft new built rental you should be at least $2500 so if that's the case its worth building..a lot of numbers here.

Some HML/PML will do business purpose (mostly refi) on owner occ but this doesn’t sound like a match and complicates things.I agree, your best bet is an owner occupied/construction loan if you can make that work.

Deals are hard to come by these days so highly focused bets are easier to monetize. 

So much so that I'll bet if you ran a scenario and compared cost of incurring full tax on your sale vs savings from pay off of debt that you're almost a wash.The only counter point would be that our government has such a rich history of rewarding bad behavior when done by large groups of voting constituents that it would be a crying shame for you to be responsible and pay off your debt only to have the govt institute a large scale forgiveness policy.