I get the sense that any sort of bubble here would originate from a drastic increase in the foreclosure rate for investment property loans given all the capital that's flowing into this sector, especially as more articles like this one will only further push house flipping into the mainstream with people (even more so than it is already).Like @Chris C. said, "The Big Short" was a way for us to understand that money was being loaned to people who shouldn't have qualified by banks who were being greedy.

So I moved there wanting to get a decent paying job.I discovered the mega-job growth was in the retail sector paying a measley $8 dollars an hour.

I grew up in Orange County so sticking to the west coast so far.Currently work in the tech sector out here (surprise surprise huh), but looking to learn and (hopefully) invest in RE in a passive/PT manner.I don't have a ton of background in RE.  

We look at specific job growth, sector growth, etc typically a better indicator for a target demographic.

There's a good pool of tenants to choose from between those two sectors.

Plus in a refi you'll probably leave a significant amount of equity in the property which further hinders improving that return.You might be better off selling and doing a 1031 and using all $350K in cash to go buy several value add or cash flow opportunities using more leverage than you could with a refi.Or another option  that many of our skittish clients are using is to sell, 1031, and then use the $350K to purchase say a $200K property that will generate at least 7-8% net of all expenses  for cash and use the other $150K with maximum leverage to purchase an additional $500K of investment real estate which throws off a very superior return due to the leverage and sector. 

Lots of growth coming on housing sector - own or rent. 

Large institutional capital investments across a variety of sectors (retail, industrial, MF & office.)

If I want to know how a REIT or any mutual fund in any sector has performed relative to the market and relative to its peers in the last 1 year, 3 years, 5 years or 10 years, I can find this out through a rating service like Morningstar, which can't be easily gamed.

Prior to Covid the office and retail sector were already undergoing transformation.