My specialty for many years has been in short sales, REO, and customer referrals for the residential market, but looking at expanding my horizons into real estate investing.

A cash buyer also has to make an offer to this seller, if there are none on the horizon for you more it is leverage for you on getting lower price.

Southern California resists this and is more orientated as a horizontal / automobile dependent city.There is probably not a crash on the horizon for your market.  

When you have had no new construction for this long and no real jump in new construction on the horizon, you're simply going to reach a tipping point where the demand is going to push housing prices up and not down.Add in the fact that there is less supply out there these days and the job market has improved significantly since the bust period and I think the opposite is true.

We try to keep things close to FHA-loanable to hedge risk in the event of a market downturn so that we could trim margins and still unload inventory to the largest possible buyer pool.For our rentals I like to try to get at least 15% inclusive of principal pay-down, equity, and cash flow (ignoring tax shields) given a targeted long time horizon. 20% would be a better target for a 5-year hold that we were trying to reposition and exit more quickly.

Have an investment horizon and cash reserves to exceed most cycles.

I wouldn't want to have to re-sell the Poinciana duplex anytime in the next 3-5 years if these guys keep cranking out new ones, but I think on a 7-10 year horizon they'd be a pretty solid, low-headache hold. 

You can equate your goals to the horizon.

The changes in underwriting criteria has made it much more difficult to buy a house and the people who buy a house to live in are lower in number, but can actually afford the homes that they buy.While it might be true that we are near a top and might have a correction on the horizon, it's unrealistic to say the correction will resemble anything close to a collapse.  

How's your investment time horizon?