My daughter's BF works for a professional flipping company in the Inland Empire and even they are having a hard time selling their properties.

Derr get your first two rented and you will know all you need to build a rental empire..

At this point, I’m not looking to build an empire or anything large scale.

I do not want some huge real estate empire.  

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.

For instance for any closing costs that cannot be rolled into the loan (e.g. appraisal), for rehabbing until the first draw, for loan carry costs until the property is stabilized (HMLs are not cheap) and of course reserves for a thousand things that might go pear shaped.Best of luck in your BRRRR empire. 

@Jo Kinal depends on where it is in the inland empire for example if you are at or below about $20-$25k below list price the conversation is over, but at $15k-$17k on lets say a $500k home you are still negotiating. 

We have used this approach on older Victorian and Second Empire buildings - no vapour retarder/barrier installed and relying on a vapour retarding primer / wall paint to provided some degree of control.  

most need 20 to 25% down and they should do that.. or they should pay cash and refi.lack of liquidity in real estate owners and reserves is just a dangerous place to be.. and Florida led the hit parade in failed real estate investors along with Vegas PHX ATL and central CA and inland empires..