It's a hot foreign buyers market - a bad soup of the wrong ingredients.

., the magic ingredient is LTV%.

Maybe @Jeff Pollack can share with you his secret ingredient on how to flip and make $500k+/year. ;)1.

One can be a part of a deal without any of their own cash,,,, if they have an abundance of the other ingredients; knowledge, hard work, desire to succeed, a big network...

We're near Whole Foods""I just use Lyft to get to work""It's a lot quieter""I love the BBQ & Beer garden""Parking is easy"It is a place that has and, I believe, will continue to be on the up and up.Every quote above is the ingredient for tech hipsters and some high prices.Now, if your buddy's place isn't dated / could collapse during the next little earthquake / on landfill, then I would certainly consider it!

It sounds like one of the key ingredients to problems is a disgruntled homeowner so if I can eliminate that side of the equation, the only people left to deal with are business people that don't have an emotional attachment.  

Always buy top of the line paints because the most expensive ingredient in paint is the part that makes it stick like glue.The bottom edge is a problem area which I have solved by using plastic Z-bar and taping the seam with blue masking tape before painting.

You have the right ingredients to start: Cash, credit, and W-2 income, but low knowledge and little time.

Action is the ingredient that ensures results.

A great job that I enjoy and all the key ingredients I needed (salary, reserves, etc) to pick up 18 homes and counting in the past 6 years.And I have to say that the one quote I tend to use for how I was able to do what I've done:"Where there's chaos, there's opportunity."