CA does offer some great opportunities to make money.

While this wouldn't be my number one choice of locations, all I care about is making money. 

. - Would pivoting to hard money lending make more sense for my current situation?

CPA from San Diego won't be cheap for sure and i am not sure that CPA needs to be local to provide great service even though i have total 4 units(3rental+1primary) i feel its still not complicated and don't want to spend couple of thousand $ to use local CPA service.

I'm particularly passionate about the Houston areaOutside of real estate, I enjoy making money, hanging with my family, and traveling. 

Markets vary, but buying a home and selling it in 2-3 years, you may end up losing money once you add in all of the extra costs.

Whether it is loud music at night, or "Hey, our car broke down and we won't have all the money this month to pay the rent" - how you handle those situations.  

Im currently renting, but have a good deal of money saved up.

We ended up going the HELOC route on that property for a few reasons. 1) the interest at the time was only 5%, which although seemed high, didn't matter too much with our potential property showing a 18% ROI 2) we leveraged a second home loan with 10% down for that new property, so our HELOC withdrawal was relatively small compared to what would be needed for a traditional loan on a rental. 3) I dont think I will see the rates in the 2% again in my lifetime, so figured I should hold on to that "free money" instead of selling it. 

This way i can put more money into the kitchen and bathrooms that will increase my property value.Hoping for some additional thoughts.