Living in a high income tax state, as well as a high property tax state and having an unfavorable limit on what state-level taxes you can deduct from your fed taxes affects *every* person living/owning a home in CA (investor or other), and makes leaving CA for lower tax states more appealing.

Not only is LA expensive, landlord tenant laws are unfavorable in California.

@Samuel Huang, Chris Martin is right about the regulations being a bit unfavorable in our area for STR.

One possible reason is that they are desperate and willing to accept unfavorable terms like that.

But we have the OPTION to rent it out and the let the home pay itself off should the market be unfavorable to sell.We like the flexibility of owning, the feeling of building equity (we do bi-weekly payments and extra principal so in the long term we’ll pay hundreds of thousands less in interest).

Hard to find any multis under $300k these days unless they're distressed or in unfavorable areas.

It sounds easy in theory - but when I tried to look at the least appreciated areas in the past 5-10 years, these are all very undesirable areas with unfavorable population/job trends. 

However, as I said in my March 2019 update, if the City of Austin doesn't get ahead of our housing challenges by reworking it's land use and development code, it's only a matter of time before the market itself "sorts out" the issues in a way unfavorable to many of the major stakeholders.

Not to mention I believe trusts can be taxed much more unfavorably than a partnership.

I would only refi when the rate differential made sense, to avoid an unfavorable rate adjustment, or to remove PMI (like with a FHA loan).