I'd like to learn more about how you stay competitive in this type of environment.  

Call/drive the competition. 

The leasing office is not going to help you, they would love to sell his properties themselves, they are your competition.

Generally, those are investments with lower cash flow, and more competition, but they're safer investments.

I would also suggest a 203k loan and rehabbing a multi family both as a value-add to get your capital back faster and because the market is so hot right now there is reduced competition on these types of properties.

The governor of California himself recently made a remark stating “We need to step up our game — time to be more damn competitive,”

As a start, you can count out a large portion of the competition as families tend to go after 3 beds and up.

Maybe a naive inexperienced person would pay that, but I demand competitive pricing.  

Everything went wrong and this was a heavy costly loss.

If you do the work, you capture that 15-18+% and keep the profit in-house.Personally, I think the best option is to buy as much cheap money as possible (finance the most you can), and buy a fixer-upper where you can be more competitive.