I live in Southern CA and would like to move to San Diego in the near future so investments in that area would be favorable even though it is a competitive market.. maybe long distance investing could be an option?

Personally I don't know that I would be comfortable with long distance investing in C/D class markets, but to each their own!

Tenants rent based on bedroom count, parking spots, distance to work or school more times than they rent due to the look or feel of a unit.

The core 4 is David Greene’s strategy for long-distance and made up of a realtor, contractor, property manager, and lender.

Unless I lived there and could set up my systems first, it may be hard to self manage from a distance.

Read David Green's book on long distance investing.No such thing as wasting your time, you have to realize what bad looks like so you can pounce on a good deal when it comes along.

And there's still a time constraint - you only have 180 days from the day we take title to close the sale of your old property. 

I just finished Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat and started reading Long-Distance Real Estate Investing.I'm looking to invest out of state for cash flow since home prices around the Bay Area are expensive.

From my perspective you'd be short-sighted and fear-motivated to sell.For the most part, you can self-manage a property, even from a distance, if you have built a few decent relationships with area investors (or can do so moving forward), so don't sweat the coordinates on a map.

It's super sexy and as far as places to live go I bet you could move to Austin and not feel the Cali blues too bad, but please do not diversify into another cyclical market . . . that would be missing one of the holy-grail opportunities of long-distance investing.