Now for some bad news, as pointed out to several other investors on other BP threads who wish to be creative with their financing, having two primary residences is mortgage fraud, and after that industry had their little meltdown, that act has been frowned upon immensely and successfully prosecuted numerous times.

In my early days of real estate I made numerous contacts at club meeting that ended up as sources of property investments, lenders, and investors in my deals, as well as people who sold their property to me.  

My private lender does 100% financing since I’ve used them numerous times.  

Having numerous exit strategies in a constantly changing regulatory & tax environments.

My reference to asset protection is that the larger percentage of your total investment is in one asset, the more potential loss you can suffer and therefore there is more risk in "having all of your eggs in one basket" than in diversifying your portfolio as much as possible.I wouldn't agree Jason,There are many other tax benefits when paying with cash.Turn you real estate investing into a business and you get to realize a tonne of tax benefits (Disclaimer, I'm not an accountant).I also don't think that paying with cash is the slowest way because you will be able to get the best deal.When using leverage you will most likely be paying top dollar for that property as otherwise the property won't qualify for a loan with decent terms.You can still diversify and protect your assets when paying with cash by investing in various markets and different kinds of properties (Duplex, multifamily, commercial, etc...)Set up numerous LLC's with your attorney being the statutory agent.It will be very hard to find who the actual owner of the property/properties is.That's my 0.02 Aussie cents on asset protectionJust my opinion mateThanks

I can't speak on California since I don't invest or live there, but what I will say is that there are numerous sub-markets in the US that need to be examined based on their unique value propositions.

My tenant has broken numerous HOA violations, done physical damage to neighbors property and threatened neighbors as well. 

You'll also need to convince these buyers you're a real player because we've all had numerous people give us their wholesaler pitch then never hear from the again.

I lived in tornado alley for 18 years and luckily our house was never hit, but there were numerous scary nights. 

He's told me numerous times that burn outs are his best buys.It will be interesting to see how the leads pan out as I've only worked with Ins.