Concentrate on your 1099 position, find ways to increase your yield or you and your wife take other/secondary jobs. 

Or, are they mostly concentrated in few "bad" areas?

The typical reason given is the concentration in life sciences and technology.

@Curtis Yoder I'm thinking on trying to concentrate beyond buying their house.

I suggest you concentrate on paying off your student loans while honing your real estate skills. 

Took about 20  years off to concentrate on a 9-5 job and looking back on it, regret every moment, but then again, a great resource like BP was not available back then, let alone the internet itself. 

I'm New and honestly I've not yet decided which specific areas of real estate investing I want to concentrate on. 

Absolutely not, I traded that equity to get rid of my problem and concentrate on local investments that would yield high returns.

Concentrate on accumulating as many rentals as possible until I have enough cash flow to comfortably cover my monthly expenses then begin building my electrical business without the NEED to pick up jobs to survive.

While working full time you're going to have to concentrate on being efficient and finding people you trust to do good work.