The tone of your post makes me think I did something wrong.

Welcome (officially) to BP @Coty Leon Always nice to see fellow SoCalians.

On a more positive note, we stuck a sign in the yard and got tenants who qualified and signed a lease - for $20 more than I had originally planned ($515 total for the basement apartment to a nice young couple.

Well @Carrie Smukal you're going to need to get past whatever makes you feel that way, because building code inspections are happening just about everywhere in the developed world.

These homes needed about $7,000 in rehab to get were they were nice enough to rent out.

I am wondering now if I am going to need to wage an expensive campaign to find one property per year.

That being said, exceptions can be made for long term tenants you trust.Many reasonable landlords are nice and want to try to work things out with their tenants.

There are other strategies which require no money out of pocket but typically a beginning flipper is going to need some available money at hand to get into the game or even to put you in position to use those strategies.

The area has a nice park next to it.

Nice, clean appearance.