So . . . if you can play with all of these factors, the nominal purchase price of the property is less important and can serve as a vanity metric to assuage the seller.

Don't pick based on price, as it's nominally different. 

I suppose Claremont could be nominated as the Pasadena of the IE, but it's still LA County....

Have you considered just paying your tenants some nominal fee to show it?

@Nomin Ochir if you're open to a conversation, I just dropped you a message.

In general, though, what we find true is that sellers always feel like the home is more valuable, and buyers using leverage kinda don't have a say in the deal because they can't truly afford the home in nominal terms.

Once that happens, rent stabilization mandates that the rent prices only increase by a nominal amount every year - this means I might end up in another similar situation a few years down the road...As I think through this, it seems like rent stabilization can be a major disadvantage for REI.

It is likely that your insurance company can provide someone to do this for free, or for a nominal charge.Waivers are mostly useless. 

I discourage use of 5 or 7 year products the difference in rate is nominal. 

As a rental, the projected cash flow will be nominal (about 300/mo) however, it's really hard to ignore the prospect of selling the place given the crazy market.