Your focus on multifamily units, commercial properties, and that coastal lifestyle really hits home.

Housing prices in two of our larger cities (Vancouver and Toronto) are also crazy high (eg $1M to buy a starter home)...actually in Vancouver proper at the moment the cheapest home (single family, not strata) is $1.2M...surprisingly (to me) in Toronto the cheapest home on the market is $650K (ignoring some listed for $1 as clearly there is a catch).Our mortgages work differently than in the US, and what we get for rates are only locked in for 1-5 years (typically) and then we have to renew at whatever the current rates are. 

Screen tenants properly or pay a good PM to do it for you3.

They should be doing a load calculation, taking into account insulation and window type if I'm recalling how it works properly. 

:Class A Properties:Cashflow vs Appreciation: Typically, 3-5 years for positive cashflow, but you get highest relative rent & value appreciation.Vacancy Est: Historically 10%, 5% the more recent norm.Tenant Pool: Majority will have FICO scores of 680+ (roughly 5% probability of default), zero evictions in last 7 years.Class B Properties:Cashflow vs Appreciation: Typically, decent amount of relative rent & value appreciation.Vacancy Est: Historically 10%, 5% should be applied only if proper research done to support.Tenant Pool: Majority will have FICO scores of 620-680 (around 10% probability of default), some blemishes, but should have no evictions in last 5 yearsClass C Properties:Cashflow vs Appreciation: Typically, high cashflow and at the lower end of relative rent & value appreciation.

the reality is you have negative cash flow when properly estimating the expenses on the 3 rentals (no way 3 rentals have $1300/month maintenance/cap ex, pm, vacancy, and misc total (basically $433 per property).  

I also reached out to Proper Insurance, but they informed me that they can't offer their standard policy due to the elevated fire risk at my property.

underwrite the loans properly

You can't do proper ARV without MLS access.

and only after you covered properly the "other" aspects of risk management (insurance, umbrella insurance, proper property management, etc.).Unless you are doing flipping (or AirBnb), in which case I suggest you look into Series-LLC and you operate each flip in its own child-series (if not clear why, ask for more details).Anyway, a lot of this is covered in my notes, and that should save you hours of research and hopefully clear some confusion as to why you want it and when and how.