After 20+ years, I hear from so many who are more motivated by fear than optimism and make decisions based on not losing rather than a high probability of winning. 

Risk goes hand in hand with the amount of money you stand to make.  

A home equity loan seems like a possible way to expand my portfolio, would consider buying a multifamily and renting out our current home to live in one of the units and purchase it as a primary home (assuming its 4 units or less), but being in the Santa Cruz CA area, I am afraid I'll need to look outside of CA for any deal that makes sense, and can't afford to lose my great job (can't work remotely).  

This means that not only do we lose the unpaid assessments, but we may also owe the management company the continually increasing pile of late fees. 

Learning that the slower I move, the more money I lose.

They could include things like waivers for documents and appraisals, relaxation of underwriting standards and money to fund repairs.However, there are benefits for people who just live in the areas, but aren't directly impacted.

If you reduce to $2,300 and are able to fill the property faster, yes, you are "losing" $100 per month, but even at that rate, it would take two whole years to equal the loss of the $2,400 vacancy month.

Used to keep small loses into becoming lawsuits.Normally offered up to $5,000 but check to see if higher limits are available.7.

Feel free to DM me if you'd like more insights on all this (we don't do biz in Alabama so got nothing to lose).Here's some other "copy & paste" advice on how to search for a better PMC:----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Recommend exploring as many sources as possible to get referrals AND cross-reference them to get as much accurate information as possible.Check out NARPM.com, BP’s Property Manager Finder (BiggerPockets: The Real Estate Investing Social Network), etc.Also, encourage you to learn from the mistakes of others - by reading posts here on BiggerPockets about owners not having their expectations met by their current Property Management Company.

But as of the last 6 or so months I seem to be losing direction.