ONLY look where the best schools  are, in the best neighborhoods you can afford.The neighborhood and  house should have instant curb appeal, sit 'at or above' street level, yard for the kids to play in.

If there is you could get it permitted and add value instantly. 

Synchronization is instant.  

You could flips homes now to create more instant capital for buy and holds later.  

@David Torres nails it... as soon as somebody walks down the hallway and sees that bathroom, they will (fine.. may*) be instantly turned off, and think in their heads they have to gut the entire thing.

Whenever I hear a news tidbit about "famous person X bla bla real estate bla bla bla" I instantly go diving into the mortgage records.

Through the CRE you can engage a buyers broker to find properties that meet the criteria suggested by the CRE.I know my advice is unconventional in today's instantaneous knowledge, instant satisfaction, guru worship environment.  

I don't have that problem on Airbnb, everything is pretty straight forward, normally I get an instant book or someone asking for preapproval.

Forget about instant gratification and work towards future goals.   

So, in a hot market the seller will look first for a cash buyer with no financing contingency, second for a buyer with approved financing from a conventional lender, third from a buyer who has been qualified by a mortgage broker, and last, i at all from a buyer with a POF from a hard money lender.Of course not all sellers, or the brokers representing them are sophisticated, so if you make enough offers you WILL get some sellers that accept you POF letter.Just to show you how meaningless these POF letters from hard money lenders really are, about 8 years ago a number of lenders published a generic POF on their websites, and told potential borrowers to download the letters, fill in the blanks, and they had an instant proof of funds.