Perhaps your time in Korea will help broaden and sharpen that mind set.Good luck. 

I specialize primarily in retail and restaurant leasing, acquisition/disposition and redevelopment.I've spent a decent amount of time listening to the biggerpockets podcast and looking though topics on the forum, but finally decided to get more involved in the community to broaden my horizons and maximize my benefits from the site.

Considering your situation, I agree with everyone else here- you should broaden your horizon and see comps in pricing for Oakland, Berkeley, Albany and El Cerrito.

Instead of just searching the heights area, I have broadened my search to builders throughout the Houston metro area.  

With no experience in Real Estate, BP podcasts and forum have definitely broaden my knowledge.

You reach a point with PPC where you can't spend more because there are no more clicks to buy UNLESS you broaden your keywords which will kill your lead quality!

It must be either your primary residence OR zoned commercial...so you'll want to broaden your search into the county for the UT clientele.

Most tend to be Section 8 friendly, so if you don't mind that, it will broaden your scope.Good luck! 

I was wondering if it is safe to broaden my horizons to out of state markets.

Instead, you need to see the overlooked opportunities that are all around you and act on the vast sums of untapped income and unclaimed success just waiting to be harnessed.You probably spend too little time studying the most successful, innovative and profitable ideas people in other industries use to grow and prosper.Yet, if you start focusing on other industry’s success practices, you’ll be amazed at how easily you can adapt these ideas to your own business situation.Suddenly, you’ll see significantly better ways to produce significantly better results from the same time, manpower, effort, activity, and capital.Vision isn't easy.As a result, most people let the opportunity of a lifetime slip through their fingers & live to regret it; but in this case I could make it easy for you to Not let this one slip away so that you can take advantage of this unique opportunity with zero risk.Instead, you need to see the overlooked opportunities that are all around you and act on the vast sums of untapped income and unclaimed success just waiting to be harnessed.In a recessionary economy like this, some 30 million people could be out of work -- they lost their jobs, got put on shortened work week.Millions will be (or are, right now) aggressively looking for business opportunities they can purchase or start.Though most of them don't have a lot of cash to invest, they still need income, they need work, they need productive activity that makes them money and keeps them feeling worthwhile.I believe there’s not one business owner or startup I’ve ever met in North America (and probably the world) who couldn’t, who shouldn’t broaden their perspective and think about how to grow yourself a small or large business empire.And that can mean nothing more than multiplying the size of your current business many times through external leveraged buyout acquisition activities.Or it can mean multiplying it through a roll up.