I am most comfortable with SFR but am intrigued by a duplex to quad unit, but at the same time they worry me if I ever had to get out quickly and quality of tenant potential.So my thoughts on my options are:--Take out both HELOC's and 401k loans and sit on that cash in a money market or similar vehicle along with what I have already to wait for the crash (whenever it arrives), using my personal and rental cash flow and redirecting the extra I'm paying on those existing mortgages to pay off the HELOC and loans quickly--Use my HELOC and stockpiled cash today to go into another, cheaper market somewhere else in the US, and buy up 3-8 more properties, either leveraged or outright. 

Phoenix is a pretty volatile market- not as volatile as L.A. where you're living, but it crashed hard in 08 and swung back up pretty hard in the past 6 years.

Is it too high and likely to crash in the next year or so?

I made hundreds of thousands of dollars in crypto and then lost almost all of it when the crypto market crashed.

We all love investing, but something a lot of people learned in the 2008 crash was that risk plays a large part, rather we like it or not, and we have to respect that. 

With rates like that unless we have another epic crash/recession like we did 10 years ago, you’ll never get those rates again anytime soon.Most people see rates (for investment loans, 30 year fixed) being 6 percent by end of this year and likely near 7 percent by end of next year.Meaning if you pay off your current mortgages you’ll be stuck if you ever want to refinance.

I look at all these folks that say hey there are no deals its tough I am going to sit on the sidelines until it crashs and jump back in.. well that's fine from a land lord or own a rental perspective.. but this year will be our best in new construction. 

I grew up in Altamonte Springs ('87-04)  and saw it go from a rural town to what it is today, sort of a haphazard mix of nice residential, not so nice residential, run down commercial with pockets of freshly built/rehabbed commercial, low income apartments-turned condos before the crash-turned foreclosure havens that are barely recovering.... 

Her asking price is a square deal and I'm ready to make an offer tomorrow, but she has no real estate experience and I have none sans-agent.Any crash course advice for a newbie who has no fear of doing the necessary work, but I don't know what I don't know.Here is how I think it might need to go:1) Make a formal written offer (Find a standard real estate contract & make the offer for both parties to sign.  

So the chance that you will ever buy any investment at the perfect time/price/rate... it's a fools errand to make that a criteria over ROI, location, condition, etc.Now maybe if you were saying you were thinking about only doing 19 deals this year instead of 20 and you wanted to hold that cash for a potential better buy after a crash, I get that too.