Take your flip profits in CA, and buy with those profits for CF in the Midwest. 

Jimmy  - Thank you for the input, definitely buy and hold.

The best strategy is to buy properties that need fixed up with hard money/HELOC, fix them up, the refi out to pay back your HELOC/hard money.

I just heard a strategy of selling points instead of buying points.

@Ben Callahan, you could find a partner who is looking to buy a similar property, be a co-signer to your partner, and have that person live in it and be a primary resident. 

It can be hard to say what exactly a good/bad deal is...I also think it can be very easy to get caught up buying RE - when that may not be the best option.

On buy-and holds we usually replace all the plumbing with pex, no matter what, because galvanized has a life expectation of about 60 years, so I usually take the sooner than later approach.Stick with hard money, like Mach1 or or MKE hard money (Scott Lurie) as they will not leand on a deal that does not pencil out, so you have the added benefit of someone experienced looking over your numbers.

Rather than just spending the money on a rate buy down. 

I've worked with some Canadians buying  here in Ohio.Indeed, rather than selling your stocks to fund investments (and lose out on any potential price appreciation and dividend payments, as well as incurring capital gains taxes), a nice alternative is to borrow against some percentage of the holdings.You would start with the brokerage where you hold the stocks and see what their loan program looks like for the account you hold. 

Cash flow is definitely the biggest challenge; both in terms of finding properties to buy that cash flow with a loan on them and just company wide given interest rates and labor/material is up and, at least where I'm at in Jackson County, MO, taxes are way up too.