Our location caused us to shift our focus from flipping to building a portfolio of long-term rental properties.- If you are 100% on one side of this, please provide your personal reasons!

@Fred Dray  many of the turn key companies have shifted their focus from C and D to A and B over the years... this is true in all markets.Us west coast folks really don't know what we don't know.. and when you go out to the mid west its totally different than what we deal with here on the West coast.For instance can you recall a time when you may have seen a 40 to 80 unit apartment complex boarded up.. in your market..

They still do to some extent, but they have a slightly more complex formula.2) After the price was reduced by HUD, they would automatically accept any offer that was 15% below the new price.3) You got to walk through the property and it was always vacant, so no evictions - I only ever bought one sight unseen and it was my best buy.4) They provided a decent inspection - I used that to narrow down what I went to look at.5) The bidding closed every day, and if they got two offers on the same day, they would just take the highest one.

As rents come in, they shift those funds to the brokerage.With the Solo 401k, the concept is similar.  

House Hacking is getting harder to do here in SoCal (at least on the numbers side), but there are still deals that can make sense and with the market continuing to shift, there will likely be more opportunities on the horizon for investors.

Just because you spend, let's say $20k on repairs, doesn't mean the house is automatically worth at least $380k after those repairs are done. 

It's discussed many times every week.I learned a lot from "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" and "The E-Myth Revisited" but those were mind-shift books.For practical knowledge, nothing beats "Every Landlord's Legal Guide" by NOLO.

That way, you are able to take advantage of all of the industry-specific features (like online rent collection, tenant screening, etc.) while automatically mapping all of your categories, properties, bank accounts, etc. to the accounting software. 

Anything having to do with Paypal is automatically off my list of options.

It is going through an interesting shift, if you don't have kids you will find Wilkinsburg has good value propositions, but stay WEST of Penwood BLVD and South of Penn Ave.