Ultimately, I wound up doing a 92-unit deal my first time around and realized that part of the reason I was struggling to win deals was simply because I lacked the credibility to be do so. 

The main hassle of conventional lending is being able to provide proof of income and seasoning.

. - some strategies I've seen California investors use to lessen negative cash flow: house hacking, mid-term rentals (people temporarily displaced from home renovation or insurance reasons like fire), rent by the room, Short Term Rentals. - The ultimate house hack, live in the small ADU unit and rent out the two levels of the main house on AirBnb in San Francisco (I would have thought STRs are oversaturated in S.F. but it worked for them and they stay fully booked).

Quote from @V.G Jason: The first and foremost reason most people don't work with BP agents is cause 99%  of them are absolute trash.

that is more a RV park. the MBH parks down here. we typically own the land, lot, and trailers. there is a reason but long story short, if i just own the lot and they dont pay the fee. i do not have the biggest teeth to push the need for my money. but if i own it all, my experience says it is a better path

A low maintenance condo rentable to good tenants sounds like a good starting point to me.I’m 56 and reasonably setup for retirement, so real estate is a stabilizing diversifier for me.

Curious how this will play out in the courts (granted it's LTR) and affect pricing products used for STR such as PriceLabs (which I use but have to seriously manually adjust for very specific reasons).

Conceptually you want to take an approach that minimizes your need to be on site - and for that reason I would advise against BRRRR.

I didn't stop requesting SSNs for no reason. 

What’s your main focus, or what are you hoping to get out of your journey here?