Seems that inventory is very low, property prices and interest rates are very high.  

But the bigger picture is the appreciation:Let say there is 3% appreciation per year to the value of the house.  

The reality is that low supply of single family properties will keep a high floor for prices.  

Many will look at our profile pictures and see young men who probably have little experience in the space, which is why I joined a company with a solid track record/decades of collective individual experience to learn more! 

The two downsides to syndications are the high minimum investment and the difficulty in finding good sponsors and deals, but you can solve for both by joining a passive real estate investment club.

Your concern is a good one, buying in this market at high rates = high payments and you may not cashflow if you were to repeat the process.However, 2 considerations. (1) By not doing it you don't have 800-1000 in your pocket, so although the payment on the new place might be higher than in a normal market you've got extra funds to cover it.(2) Your new rate is not forever, perhaps in this high rate market, it's as you say, best case you're breaking even if you repeat this process.

I highly recommend checking and verifying IDs.

But I would like to use my chance to comment on this to emphasize how much of this situation really reflects on how you've managed the landlord-tenant relationship to date.In a high-regulation area-of-operation like California, cordial landlord-tenant relationships will get you past a lot of garbage like this.

.$500 seems high, but depends on the locality.

I no longer qualified for traditional financing because I already own many rental properties and my DTI was high for the bank, so I purchased these in a business entity with a trusted private investor and was able to refi the 1st property/sell the 2nd property to pay back my investor and ultimately keep the better property for zero money down.