Can you move to a better market where there are plenty of house hack opportunities for a decent price near the 1% rule? 

In this environment I wouldn't put all my eggs in the STR basket.If your insentent on this then you must put a lot of effort into vetting the area, the rules, the property etc to make absolutely sure a given property will cashflow with conservative numbers and what your exit strategy per property is if they don't go as anticipated.

This is easy in principle, but difficult to pull off.

As a rule of thumb, I'd probably steer clear of anything over 50 years old unless it's been recently updated.

Fix and flip loans are so easy and fast to do.

If it were easy, everyone would do it.

My advice is not to rule out renting by the room if you find a great deal on a larger property.

It's not easy at first.

How easy and what price? 

Does anyone know if these rules still stand with new CA state laws?