Need to get Acquisition Job

You could team up with an analyst who wants to do his own deals and has the experience but needs capital.

You're working your way up, I'd suggest getting a job at CoStar and parlaying that into something..........

I'm relatively local. I might consider doing something with you in the right situation. Slowly starting to put deals together. PM me.

There's a super cool SD guy on this board who might be able to point you in the right direction.

I'm in REPE acquisitions in Rancho Santa Fe. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the market and deals you'd like to get into. Feel free to PM me.

Since you have $600k...

1. Connect with small lenders, get a list together of them and find out what they're on balance sheet and off balance sheet loan products are. Also meet with hard money lenders who can leverage up to 90%
2. Connect with other investors - Join a local REIA club. Try to find the legit investors doing lots of deals. Start talking to someone who has experience managing assets and doing capex (they could be the sweat and you could be the equity).
3. Connect with contractors and start interviewing them - there are a lot of dumb nut contractors and you want to find who the good ones are. Ask those investors from #2 who they recommend.
4. Connect with good CRE brokers and Resi agents (if you're looking for 2-4 units, for instance). A lot of real estate agents suck too, so make sure you interview them well. Ask investors for rec's
5. Get FHA financing, pick up a 2-4 unit in coastal or inland north county. A place you could fix it up, put some value in. It's 3.5% down with financing + 100-150 bps closing costs. You have to live in the place for a year minimum.
6. Let's say you pick up a $1MM 4 unit, that's about $50k cash into the deal. You then have $550k remaining for investments at 25% down conventional financing or 10-15% down HML financing. That's a good amount of run-way in capital you could use to pick up another 4 unit, or venture to something like a 6 unit with ground street retail, small commercial building, etc.
7. Talk to PacNumber .. He's a broker in town
8. Jump on biggerpockets to network with people locally and ask for information (it's more residential focused)

Why take an acquisition job, making $60-80k in SD when you have the capital to build your own portfolio? There's not many REPE firms in SD as compared to orange county, LA, and SF. At the minimum, do FHA financing and pick up something where you can increase equity and learn first hand while living in the property.