For the high cost areas like Palo Alto it is difficult to get a property to cashflow out the gate because rents have not caught up with the cost. 

Building on existing land helps eliminate the issue of land scarcity, which is a significant challenge due to California’s high real estate prices.

@Paul Cijunelis  thank you for this response Paul, well I firstly got interested in CRE when one of my high school teachers told me about how he does it and that kind of started my interest, I really love CRE because I've noticed it's a very lucrative and risky business like high risk high reward, but not just that I really love seeing a bunch of properties being brought back to life with renovations.

•If there’s high competition (many active rentals in the area), you won’t be able to price at the top of the market since tenants will have plenty of options.3.

Highly recommend partnering with a local realtor who knows the market. 

I made a fair size claim last year and it paid off pretty painlessly except for the 90 day lag. highly recommend them.If I had used a regular home owners policy with and STR addendum I'm pretty sure it would not have covered my particular issue.

Some of the condos here have extremely high condo fees. 

If Airbnb is your best option, choose a location with high occupancy rates and optimize pricing with dynamic tools like PriceLabs.

I did not pay for the course or get any deeper because I figured 1) High return = high risk, and I am at a point where I can't afford to lose that kind of money; and 2) I didn’t see a value in a course- why not network with local investors who need down payment, and work it out directly on a deal that I could more easily underwrite?

So to that extent feedback on BP is highly biased towards those activities..