Happy to give you a recommendation for foundation contractor. 

This means that you will probably need to pay registration and filing fees in at least 2 states if you don’t buy CA property as a CA resident.Be sure to tell your accountant that you may now need to file non-resident income tax returns in each state where you own property as well.

Talk to real estate agents, property managers, contractors, lenders, title agents, etc. to find out what is going one.Also, you do need to think about what your goal is.

This means that you will probably need to pay registration and filing fees in at least 2 states if you don’t buy CA property as a CA resident.Be sure to tell your accountant that you may now need to file non-resident income tax returns in each state where you own property as well.

(And sometimes, the property managers that advertise locally, actually live more than 50 miles away which means they might not have the necessary contacts with the local contractors or be as responsive as you would wish, so watch for that).

But you can have a contractor go fast and be great and you can have a contractor go slow and be great..

the first step that I would take is to find an investor from the realtor in your area and you can build a lot of your network just piggybacking off of theirs with their recommendations of contractors and other professionals biggerPockets has a great tool for finding realtors.

prices are high, interest rates are high, there is tremendous demand for inventory by both retail / primary buyers and investors, good contractors are booked up, some materials are still expensive. ' can't we just be honest that (1) if you are in a strong financial position, then yes, RE is still a good investment and ALSO  (2) it's way more difficult than it was in 2016? 

That being said, how does one go about getting architect plans for a home to get bids from contractors in a smart way?

Make sure you and your contractor get the right permits but all you have to do is add temporarily walls to where you want to section off.