Well in a nut shell... he gave me about 6 zip codes to look at.  

The numbers appear good but the kicker is that the quotes were coming in around $125 due to the code issues that would need to be addressed.

these are just cosmetic changes. codes it have a basement?  

I found out that zip code: 90001, 90002, 90003 have pretty strong rental incomes.

I wouldn't expect much of a discount on the first job or two over what a homeowner would expect to pay. 

I have contacted the licensing board 3 times as well as my local building code office, and each time I have been informed that you the owner, regardless of whether you are hiring a GC, MUST have a contractor's license. 

I am going through my second rehab with the help of my father as a retired contractor but even with the dirt cheap family discount labor it can get expensive quickly.

It get pretty complicated if you're not too familiar with taxes and tax code. 

Any time a future stream of money is involved, discounts could be applied and assignments made of the income stream.

Now, I don't know what your volume purchase is, but for me where an average ticket is > 5,000, I always get a bulk discount, I wont be happy if I shop at my local supply house (whitecap or homedepot), and they just give me 10% off the shelf price, I'd walk out and tell them I'll shop around more.