I'd really like to get something going in Southern California too but I might have to look at SFR's just because of the scarcity of quality affordable (based on my position) multi-family's.  

He is a great guy that does quality work.  

Don’t think by already having an appraisal it is going to speed up your loan processing.

Great point Kyle J; quality tenants are obviously great, just a bit concerned that more requests might come down the pipe and start eating into our baby cash flow. 

And it is more reasonable to buy better quality as this is your chance to get potential higher equity with 3.5% down - you are "buying" cashflow today and potential equity in the future and a headache of course :))) so all three parameters are better with a better quality 4 plx, risk is higher though but in my experience better quality small Multi Families are appreciating better.

I'm looking at buying a set of 3-5 du/tri/quad-plexes over the next 5-8 years, then transitioning them into a 10-20 unit apartment building.End game is somewhere in the range of 50-100 doors spread out over 2-5 high-quality properties.

Now we plan to buy a rental property in Avondale, AZ, and all the SFRs of similar quality are in HOAs. 

I guess it all just depends on the quality of the deal. 

Louis you don't have to use an underlayment for the roofing, which is will only create issues down the road.Plumbing -- Using quality parts (not necessarily the most expensive) over the absolute cheapest always seems like a good idea.

Reason being is cash flow and speed of return to being able to build equity to refinance down the road.