Nothing wrong with getting a general idea by using Zillow for what sold/for sale, but the Zestimate is not accurate.

What advice would you give to someone who lives in Silicon Valley in the Bay Area when it comes to performing market research and selecting zip codes to search for deals?

I know several guests on the podcast mentioned doing a 50/50 split, where they perform all of the legwork and the investor provides all of the money for the purchase and the rehabbing costs.

Professional tenants...and by tenants, I mean termites.You performed an inspection and found nothing.

And you are limiting yourself the opportunity of savings and quality work by looking for someone who can do two trades in one company, if there are 30 demo contractors and 59 framing, you might only have 5 companies who can do both trades, and most probably they are a self-performing GC and have a GC license.

If we were to build, we would be self performing everything, no subs, all in-house employees (frankly, it's not that hard), financials might be a problem, it is not as strong to build a 1-2M project - gross receipts around 300-400k this year if I were to guess and 290k from march 2014-aug 2014 (our 2014 fiscal year), license and insurance is fine, experience??

I think your time frame is pretty accurate from my experience.

For example, you can buy a note on a property in Florida (or any other state) that performs and produces more stable and higher income than you may get on a rental property in any of the locations you pitched.

You are accurate, for the most part, about the types of markets.

Frankly, If you sign a contract to buy a house at an agreed upon price, I think, ethically, you should perform or walk away without tying up the seller any longer.