Thanks @Dilan Pradhan. Haha I am a nice person :) Although I dont know Id qualify to be a mentor as I am newish to RE myself, but of course I can share whatever lessons we've learned as we've stumbled through quite a bit of road blocks with the Dallas prop here.
And no, we only have 1SFR rental there in RC, our tenant arranges and pays for the all repairs herself (she lets us know tho). We lucked out, but also at $5k/mo her rent is less than market, so she lucked out with us also. One 4plex is in Salinas and other 4plex is in Lancaster. They are both managed by PMs for 3 years now and both PMs are very good.
I agree that Ca is a tough market to cash flow now. And you may have to take a bigger risk and go out of state to have a higher cash flow. Or you can look into other areas of Ca that could potentially have more room to appreciate, easier to manage with a full time job, but sacrifice with smaller cash flow. It might depend how many years to retirement you have, your long term goals, and how much risk you can sleep with at night.