In almost every other way real estate wise (broadly speaking) California isn’t great.  

Which you did.This is a little more broad to house-hacking, but it does hit on numbers-https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/considera...But yeah, they won't work on everything and therefore, house-hacking isn't always a 100% winner!

@Tyler Smith, I think there can really be a spectrum of passivity when it comes to how one defines TurnKey investing.  

As a broad rule of thumb closing costs usually range from 2-5% of purchase price and include things such as loan fees, discounted points, appraisal fees, title searches, title insurance, surveys, taxes, deed recording fees, credit report, etc.

Yes, Baltimore's population is declining, but city wide population is too broad of a metric to use.  

I start with a wide net, first focusing on broad markets, then  like a funnel then focus on lesser, look at dozens in several focus areasHow do you guys generally do your broad multifamily searches?

It really just depends on where you are at on that spectrum.

Now,   there are a couple re-sales currently available among this stock competing with a few brand new units all of which have been for sale with weekly opens for at least a few weeks.More broadly,  definitely seeing more open houses and more SFR / townhouse / condo stuff available in south end of seattle,  but prices haven't really moderated yet.   

@Patrick Philip That's an awfully broad brush your gurus are painting with.  

If so, use low cost broadly diversified index funds that closely track their benchmarks.