Investing close to home allows you to gain hands-on experience, learn the ropes, and be more involved in the day-to-day.

What are the watch outs or steps that you recommend?

If your paying cash to buy and rehab then refinancing I get that.. but your still paying for two closing costs.

So you sell, and get your deployed capital back that got that property BUT also have appreciation and debt paydown, so the $ from closing is enough to buy 2 more new built units. 

Located close to the East End/Oakland where the universities are. 

Watch the house to see if they abandon it, which they probably will.Buy some books and educate yourself on how to be a better landlord.

As you read these books, watch the BiggerPockets podcasts.

How does the middleman (investor) exit out of the sandwich lease option once the investor finds an end buyer to close on the original purchase price between investor and seller?

I've closed a bunch of loans with Kiavi, Roc, and a few with ABL, I also closed with RCN, Easy Street, Lima One, and some smaller private lenders.I've come to the conclusion that the experience at the lender is not globally good or globally bad. 

If have investment property, we are looking for relatively updated units (we are ok doing some work ourselves), class C+/B tenants, with rents either close to market rate or that can be increased.