All situations are specific to individuals.Our best wishes and empathy go out to those LA individuals and communities.It’s been about 6 years since one of our storage locations was flooded for about 4 months.  2 feet over the roof.  

I started out house hacking prior to getting married.

Need a home, it needed work, price and location where pretty great.

How do you go about finding areas to invest in with limited capital?

I have one for my other rentals through a prior relationship but that's a couple of hours away. 

I'm guessing it's the winter and the location.

If it's currently an STR they should be able to provide you with the p/l statement from prior years so you can see gross rents, operating expenses, average daily rates and occupancy levels.

When choosing a location for your first rental, it’s great that you’re considering factors like crime rate, population growth, employment rate, and price-to-rent ratio—those are all key metrics.

In those days it was possible to locate and tie up a “killer” deal, and close the transaction with absolutely zero of the investors own money.

If you buy good properties in good locations you can do fine in Buffalo.