I knew eventually it would start spilling over and people would move inland toward a nice area like Sacramento to find a great place to live at a much cheaper standard of living.  

Any recommendations on expert agents who can help in land transactions.

So it is fair to say he speaks from experience too.I use leverage too, but it is hard for me to criticize someone who has built that type of rental empire using all cash. 

One last thing I want to touch on: This may or may not be a scaleable business, but I would venture to say it's just a good starting point and not something to build an empire on.  

An inland area like ours tends not to have the same spikes and drops as the coastal big cities when things do finally come down.

Besides what is the point of hitting your goals and building your real estate empire, if you don't allocate time and resources to assist those who come after you? 

It has the most creative deals; in fact you almost HAVE TO get creative in order to make land deals happen, because the traditional forms of financing a purchase don’t usually apply in land.

I'm pretty certain I've watched a few presentations your dad has online - one in particular for  'building a real estate empire'. 

My father is more frugal than not as well but he's also got a commercial real estate empire - he reinvested his money for many decades and as a result he didn't have a lot of money to spend on other things which made him and my mom frugal as a result. 

On the other hand, in other parts of CA more inland, property prices dropped more than 40-50% and still havent recovered.