I agree that the market is very competitive in California - especially if you are searching via the MLS or making offers to distressed or vacant property homeowners. 

As a private homeowner a good real estate brokerage should have a list of all things useful to homeowners available to you.

Quote from @Hanna Brown: @Jay Hinrichs If the bidder at the auction pays cash for keys to get the homeowner out, does the person redeeming from the owner position (exercising rights of redemption w/in 180 days) have to reimburse them for those costs they paid to get the homeowner out? 

Nothing can guarantee that.Looking back over 30 years and hundreds of deals I can recall only two occasions when a greedy homeowner tried to bail on our deal. 

But to answer your question why you still see so many active STR's on Airbnb in a restricted area, it could be a couple things: It could be a "hosted rental" meaning the homeowner is there and is just renting rooms on Airbnb.

Also, at this time I had seen properties selling for 10 – 20% over ask regularly.Interest Rate 30 year conventional 7%Homeowners Insurance = $1,000 annuallyRents = $1,800 per monthWhen I looked at those assumptions, I would need to put down $80,000 on this house to get it to hit my cashflow goal of $500 minimum per month which equates to 35% down.Total mortgage + escrow = $1,267.13 per month with rents at $1,800 my monthly cashflow is $532.87.From my experience, after taking out vacancy and maintenance costs you are left with around 73% of that total cashflow number once the rental is established.People have asked why a $500 per month cashflow goal.

Mortgages are the last thing to default for a homeowner and appreciation has been so high in Canada that every homeowner who has purchased before 2022 has gained equity and could just refinance their loan over a longer amortization before defaulting.

I use PropWire to find home owners and give them calls, however I never get responses back.

@Mark F. chad good morning. what did AHP do .. were they buying defaulted paper and then trying to do note mods with the homeowners in mass scale ?  

The majority of homes are owned by homeowners not investors so they fail to put themselves in the shoes of a homeowner or look at data from the standpoint of being in the minority.