If not, I’ll write it off as a loss.

Even though I know you’re writing tongue-in-cheek, @Scott Trench, I think it’s a great idea.

They are generous on the values so sometime my actual cash out of pocket is less than 15%, for example, I pay 102K for a house that appraises for 108K, the extra 6K they count towards my down payment so I get a mortgage for 91,800 because that's 85% of 108K and I write a check for about 10K.

Thanks Tom Wheelwright for writing the book "Tax Free Wealth". 

If you put those same dollars to investment property you get to write it all off.

Great write up!

Aside from the financial resources, I suppose one skill is I write algorithms to distill signal from bulk data for a living, so if there are any other programmers out there please reach out!

Quote from @Fernando Domingo: Does anyone have a recommendation for an insurance company that will write a policy for a CA property?

They even showed us a TED Talk video and asked us to write down "Before I die, I will..."

I believe they changed the guidelines years ago on the amount of seller assist you can receive on an FHA loan, so I’d look into that with your mortgage company before making an offer, but definitely use that to your advantage when writing an offer!