But from what I hear there's some great deals outside of the West Side, so I just need to expand my horizon a bit. 

I doubt you will be able to deliver vacant but if you send the increase now they know what is on the horizon and that may be more then someone coming in may do. 

With all the signs pointing in the right direction, I feel confident in the future of the city as it pertains to real estate values - especially over long time horizons of greater than 10 years.

You accept smaller gains and bigger tax to gain the economies of that volume.Buy and hold takes a long horizon but the properties are generally more forgiving in terms of immediate cash to obtain and put into production.  

House Hacking is getting harder to do here in SoCal (at least on the numbers side), but there are still deals that can make sense and with the market continuing to shift, there will likely be more opportunities on the horizon for investors.

But investors have longer time horizons than next week or next month.  

I would have determined what the lender needed to see in form of a W2 income and looked for employers who were flexible on hiring in the 4-6 month time horizon.

In that case, profits will be split the same way, just the returns will be lower since it's over a longer time horizon.

Investment horizon?

Every financial planner knows that the shorter the time horizon, the less risk you should take.