The low income versus high cost of living is referred to locally as the sunshine tax. https://www.businessinsider.com/most-expensive-places-to-liv...https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sandiegocitycal...It is my view that the incomes cannot sustain the high cost of housing in San Diego but it has seemed this way to me for four decades and yet the RE prices keep increasing.  

Me and my partner both bring things to the table that the others don't.

No sure if the HML who was selling him the paper / and I dont know in your deal if you table funded that and they bought the loan 3 days later..

Look at a zoning table and see what is possible in each.  

@Dean Malka thanks for providing that table for rehab cost estimates for Pittsburgh, this is really useful! 

Like you said in your post, "Buying and holding is a long term strategy...............focus on the end goal"The second reason for trying to get good deals is that if you can get a 10-20% built in equity off the bat, it has the advantage of:- taking a big part of the risk factor off the table- built in equity that can be utilized as required- better cash flowThere are a lot of people on BPs that say that "money is made on the front end in RE".

You could try reaching out to ask questions and maybe that would turn into a sort of mentorship type relationship if adding a partner is not on the table. 

However, we typically use the FHA-203k loan because it involves a renovation, which I highly recommend if you are looking to really boost your equity and have the cost of the renovation wrapped into your loan with a VERY LOW AMOUNT OUT OF POCKET.I like the FHA loan, but honestly, the Fannie May Home Style is an even better product at this point because you just have to bring a bit more cash to the table 5% vs. 3.5% (w/ FHA), but you have a bit more flexibility.  

It's staged with a daybed + trundle (plus 2 chairs, coffee table and TV; its a good size), but the windows do not open, so egress by stairs only. 

There are a number of meetups in Sacramento and we have been coordinating the dates among hosts so that there is no overlap - I run the West Sacramento Meetup that @Ben Howard mentioned (we gather every 4th Tuesday of the month).Here is a list of meetups that we're in collaboration with (they are all based on an abundance mindset that we have here on BP)- 1st Tuesday - REI Connect @ Roseville Meetup (reach out to @Nicole Masters)- 3rd Tuesday - Investor Mixer @ Crawdads on the River- 3rd Thursday - Folsom Out of Bounds (dates may shift a bit)- 3rd or 4th Wednesday - Real Estate Round Table (CH Cafe & Grill) - they recently relaunched and stabilizing the schedule- 4th Tuesday - West Sacramento Real Estate MeetupI'm working on putting together an easy to access list that Sacramento investors can refer to.