Now they are anchors producing crappy returns and I almost can't give them away.

If you require initial cash flow, San Diego may not be the right market   However if you plan to hold long term, few markets have produced better return on residential RE.Good luck

I haven't been able to renovate the property like I had wanted (and thus charge higher rent) but it is income producing and we have a good relationship. 

Flip 3, produced no profit for us and we quickly learnt where we went wrong on the flips.

And that half million is producing at least 5%. 

Your either going to beat your head on the wall because of the debt and stress about it making money or stress that you paid all or a substantial amount of your cash when you go all in. i understand this will be unpopular for a lot of BP viewpoints but it worked for us, we own 2 STR that we owe nothing on now and purchased both for 670k and have a real value of $1.2-1.3mm. it requires you to put a lot of your cash back to your reserves but you have it all to do it with.Personally we believe in ourselves and our ability to pick high producing properties(that is the very first and foremost consideration) then we went all in and never looked back, 2 years later bought our second STR with mostly cash. 

The only way we were able to buy a home that would produce cashflow in the future was to buy a home with a loan that was taken out between early 2020 and mid 2022.I don't know if you are placing a large down payment or paying in cash to allow for a better chance to ensure cashflow, but if you are using financing I would highly recommend buying your next home as a primary with an assumable loan. 

It can and usually does produce better cash flow than whole unit rentals but it requires more work than whole unit rentals.  

This amounts to lost opportunity because if you had purchased RE, at the closing it can start producing return. 4) ADUs detract from the existing structure whether this is privacy, a garage, or just yard space. 5) this is related to the value added by the ADU, but there are many more buyers looking to purchase homes for their family than there are RE investors looking to purchase small unit count properties.

CA produces probably over half of all veggies and such in the entire US and its all Hispanic .