You could even lease it at net-0, or a minor book loss, and it's still wildly profitable to do such. 

This is wild.

Wholesaling is like the Wild West these days and you have a feeding frenzy going on with these Motivated Sales List and people are being preyed upon. 

but if you can get in the game in the Bay Area and if your like those that all chim in on BP I am buy and hold for ever... where do you want to do that.. in a market with history is no movement or in a market with a history of wild upward swings over time.

There are definitely exceptions and wildly different markets.  

Rehab costs can vary wildly by what the quality of product and especially the contractor.

Opinions vary wildly on this topic, but a $450 month unit is always going to be rough.I'd wait until those tenants leave naturally (evicted, move out, whatever) then get in and do the rehabs and place what you hope are good tenants. 

Unfortunately pretty much nothing needed to start in Arizona, it's still the wild west

Plus, if you have a property worth $50k (not recommended) and the boiler goes out, that's the same as if the boiler goes out on a $100k property, so the ratio of reserve to downpayment is going to be wildly different for different prop classes.Since you're just getting started, I'd focus on building your capital to a point where you can afford to get into a solid asset class with a good $10k buffer behind you, if you go the rental route.

This always seems to come down to Millennials being some rare, exotic hothouse flower of a generation that are somehow both unable to understand basic arithmetic and hold wildly different viewpoints about their housing security from all who came before...because.