Maybe seller holds a 2nd, maybe partner with someone, maybe get some F&F (friends and family) money, maybe offer a higher rate for the 2.5 years the 2nd is outstanding. 

Auction.com for some 66% or so of the preforeclosures in your area, other trustee's run other auctions, but auction.com has sucked up the majority of the business nationwide.   

The median home price is also very low nationwide which creates a low barrier to entry.

If it were an outstanding applicant and I was trying to get there business i may try to entice them, but generally I'm going to offer things like discounts on rent if they wanna sign for more than a year.  

From the Great Recession to Q1 2022 it was easy to find RE that seemed very likely to produce outstanding return. 

For example Intel headquarters, Google, FB, Amazon, Nationwide, Honda, (recently Anduril announced another 4k jobs to Columbus).

Many people have a mortgage on a property where the land value is much greater than the home (aka near the water) and insurance is not able to pay off your entire outstanding mortgage.

I was determined and wanted something that I could sustain for the long term for my family's livelihood and control the effort I put in and the results I got from that effort.I specialize in sourcing properties for fix and flip investors nationwide (wholesaling, but with real-world experience and closed profitable deals for myself and my investor partners) with a roadmap to acquire rental properties as finances permit.A lot of our deals are currently coming through organic search as I have a background in substantial traffic generation through search engine optimization and organic means.

It's a systemic, nationwide problem not just a CA problem. 

@Michael Kussin I've been a developer nationwide for the past 17 years.