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?

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.

First of all, Nate Diaz should be single handedly be responsible for Stockton, CA taking the #1 seed.