On the other hand, I have bought numerous properties from absentee owners that paid cash for their investment property here.

Lose the battle, win the war.

I've sent him numerous emails specifying what I want and I now have a bunch of unanswered texts asking about what's going on. 

The best area is north of War Memorial (US150).

I've recently saved enough resources to purchase my first business, which I'm considering to be a gas station.I've done many of my own calculations, and have looked at numerous listings on many different sites.

There is an area in Redlands CA that is pretty close to a war zone.

I concur 100% that it is an underutilized resource with it numerous benefits compared to, “civilian, conventional loans.” 

I can tell you numerous stories of CA investors that I've met at meet ups who have lost money OOS, especially Class C. 

In our24 years of experience, managing almost 100 S8 leases currently, the average S8 tenant has a FICO under 580, numerous collections from utility & cell phone companies, doesn't want to pay a security deposit, much less an application fee and claims they don't know how to fill out their S8 paperwork despite being in the program for several years - hint: they want YOU to do it for them.Most, not all, are eligible for government assistance due to a funeral-march of bad choices.REALITY: you are trust trading one set of problems for another.You can succeed with S8, but you need to understand the challenges and plan accordingly.

For numerous reasons, this strategy is not anywhere near as simple as it appears, and the risk of default problems can be quite high if the seller is inexperienced or unknowledgeable.