Keep up the grind. 

A motivated seller won't mind if she makes some noise in the background or you have to excuse yourself for a moment to tend to her.

Without knowing your reason for wanting to leave CA, I would recommend you hold your W2 as long as you can and get the grind and hustle going.

Some people flip houses and grind out massive profits every year.

By giving myself just one small task to focus on each week, it helped me refocus and tune out the noise. 

Thieves don't prefer these since you have to use a Cutoff saw and make a lot of sparks and noise, easier for us to view and see if anything is wrong. 

trash - parking - noise - safety regulations, the requirement of a Business License et al.One thing to highlight: "If you rent on your own or use a non-licensed property management company such as Airbnb, you will be responsible to collect and submit the 3% Town of Hilton Head Island taxes."

People will see this and respect you more for it, subsequently they will loan you the money on the next deal because you demonstrated enough character that you were willing to grind it out.  

Our plan is to find something local that we could 'house hack', turning our current residence into a rental while we add value into something that we could ideally find under our budget but it's going to take some grinding to find something that meets the criteria! 

Keep grinding away at it, learn and you will succeed.