Were you already wealthy enough that quitting the day job freed up resources to expand the investment empire, or have you consequently struggled to pay your bills? 

Non-empirically, I would suggest you get the better tenant candidates in February/March, but if you screen well you will still find reliable tenants this time of year.

Inland Empire which Riverside is a part of is more susceptible to getting variable interest - residential performing better today, industrial hot today and always hot, while office is soft.

I'd say that from what I've seen (both from some data mining and from pure empirical evidence), your myth vs reality points are right on.I certainly have data to support the fact that several institutional buyers (and I use that term lightly -- many are just large private equity funds that most people probably wouldn't call "institutions") are buying up to 200+ properties per month in my metro area (which is a large area, btw).We've found about 100 cash buyers who have purchased 20+ properties in our metro area in the past 12 months, and I'm guessing (I don't have the data in front of me) about 10% of them have purchased at least 100 properties in the past 12 months.To you second point, yes, many of them are new buyers in the area, and the larger ones are brand new to the area in the past 12 months.

I am located in the inland Empire.

Some people are investing in the Inland Empire.

In our experience the exception to this is many old - Second Empire, Victorian, Edwardian, ballon-framed houses had horizontal cross-members in the wall cavity spaces (aside from the plate at the ceiling or floor).

I'm looking at out of state options and I'm also looking in the inland empire area.

I got hooked on the concept and hope to grow my real estate "empire" to be a substantial source of income eventually (although my wife says I can't call it an empire with just two houses.) 

I just don't believe that N4/L1s are hopeless and that is because I base things on the empirics: that route is how corporate landlords get rid of nonpaying tenants.