I'm never in favor of government over stepping, but I can also see how desperate individuals can be taken advantage of during this tragedy. 

We have a few markets we target outside of California, but obviously if you want to stay close to home, Sacramento would be an ideal choice.

I’ve been around real estate for decades, and I read in The Economist once that in lively markets like Charlotte, folks will pay a premium for a comfortable room if you’re near major employers.A friend of mine tried something similar out in Austin a while back.. he’d inherited a 4-bedroom property and split it into individual room rentals.

Same property listed water bill paid by landlord so how much does it cost to put individual meters for each property so cost can be moved to tenants? 

I think that gets lost VERY quickly with certain individuals.

have looked into Batchleads as well but quality of data looks comparable  Check out traceestate.com $0.08 per individual and $0.15 per LLC.

After reading so many intros of young, single, eager individuals, I'm hoping I'm not too late to the game! 

The tenants enjoy using the interface, it is simple to communicate with them as a whole or individually, collect rent payments and see when they are in transit, offer CC payment options at tenants expense, track maintenance request, share documents, and lease the property.Short comings are their financial portion.

For instance, in my private lending, I dont really give a numerical credit score much weight, but I absolutely look at the composition and history of the individual tradelines on a report if the borrower is a smaller outfit, such as a single member LLC or similar solopreneur-type operator.

Though I would caution you on hard money lending until you understand the industry a bit better, that can be very rewarding but you have to be able to do your due diligence on deals because you're turning over your hard-earned money to an individuals project, often a flip.