Regarding nonrefundable deposit on lease option to purchase for a home selling for $375K.What does the nonrefundable deposit entail?

Many investors I work with from the Bay Area are purchasing here and many people from the Bay Area are relocating here as work from home becomes more accepted.

My out of state clients are successfully BRRRRing and flipping here because they can find rentals around $120k to$180k purchase price.

Rule number 2:  The Option Consideration is NOT a deposit on the purchase, it's the cost of the Option Contract, and it should NOT be given as a credit toward the purchase of the property. 

Looking to purchase in the suburbs though.

Used my deployment money to purchase a property in Sacramento using VA loan. 

Typically a seller can't get out of a purchase contract once they agree to sell, but it's also rare for a court to force a sale if the seller just doesn't show up to closing.

We typically ask the purchaser of the report to enter all 0's for the SSN which indicates to our screening team that a SSN is not available.

The only way you can cure rental housing shortfalls is to create enough new supply to reduce prices of existing units, drive down the price of purchasing housing for rental purposes such that more is bought, or for government to create and manage the supply itself.

It kind of depends on what your goals are, but you may be able to start consolidating your properties a little more with like-kind exchanges and/or purchasing larger properties where you could do cost-segregations on.