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. 

In a dual agency situation, the agent has to serve as a neutral party, and owes a duty of confidentiality to both sides.  

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.   

If that’s limited then your safest bet now is to buy a duplex or triplex that is in disrepair that you can put sweat equity into.I can’t speak for your skill set or risk tolerance but if you’re just starting out with investing and have limited flip experienced you’re safer bet is to go multi family.