You need to plant the seed now and the rest is about timing.As far as FSBO - I think they are a waste. 

The bubble is always 18 months away :)Here are similar pundits who predicted crashes, with excellent numbers and reasoning behind them, over the past five years. 2013: Denver Post: “Buyers Caught in a Price Squeeze”CNBC: “Housing Market Already Shows Signs of a New Bubble”2014: New York Times: “The Bubble Is Back”Fortune: “Why the Housing Recovery is over, in four charts”2015: CNBC (Again): “Housing today: A ‘bubble larger than 2006’”National Review: “We’ve inflated another bubble; count on the crash.”2016: CNN: “Housing bubble fears have returned”MarketWatch: “The Seeds of the Next Housing Crisis have already been planted”2017: Forbes: “58% of Homeowners Think The Housing Market is Set for a Correction”USA Today: “Hot Housing Market Could Cool in 2018”2018: Bloomberg: “This Rare Bear Who Called the Crash Warns Housing is Too Hot Again”I think that if you are afraid of a bubble, you'll never invest, and will surely lose.

I drained my seed capital and found myself draining my 401K to finish out my last unit.

I don't see it happening.I think you need to re-adjust your expectations, and concentrate on SFR, or if you MUST have a multi-unit, that kind of seed money could get you into a 4-6 unit.4-plexes start in the $200K range. 

Do you think the balance will eventually shift, and people will move out of cities to plant seeds instead of into cities to plant seed capital?

For many investors, the bulk of the time and energy input is at the front end when raising their seed capital, and not losing that is the name of the game.

I used Seed Capital through Success Path - and now I am in credit card hell. 

This little seed planted the passion and idea of owning a property and renting it out.I've always rented all my life (I'm a millennial after all), but now that the time has come to settle down, I wanted to start preparing financially for the rest of my life. 

I would also keep an eye& ear out for the emerging innovators, every significant economic shift and calamity breeds innovators and those innovators require seed capital, think Facebook, Google, Netflix and so on, those early $ investors made multipliers on their capital that makes any other investment pale in comparison.

There's a difference.2 - Don't rationalize a bad deal into a good one3 - Don't spend your seed money...use it to infinity though4 - Learn "How Money Works"...and what I'm saying here probably isn't what you think I'm saying.5 - Learn "How to Analyze Markets"...not just properties.6 - Learn how to, and then execute, a "REI Plan"...long term and short.