Anyone know if L.A. county provide public records online?

I haven't used it, but we provide a great FREE Online Property Analysis Tool here at BiggerPockets!

noobdog1 says it all pretty well. there are plenty of shady practices going on in NYC brokerages... loopholes and such to fleece dollars from RE prospects, "application fees" should be closely examined before paying them. there are scams with "applications" that usually result to nothing other than just someone collecting your money.

I happened to stumple upon a home on-line on a realtor website.

Then we run into the problem, as is unique to the age we live in, of finding a legitimate lender on-line.

I was researching real estate investing online to learn about it and I stumbled upon BP; I'm super excited about the stumble.

I signed up for one of the Wealthability online classes.  

That might be standard practice, but I'm not sure.

At the initial B.O.H. inspection to bring the unit back on-line they determined how many occupants I was allowed.Good to hear you got it resolved with no issue though.

You can speed your own estimating of values up a bit by running numbers through your pro forma using list prices available on the MLS for practice.