I have a tenant whose dog tore the screen of a new vinyl window and she was just incredibly worried until I repaired it in front of her with some spare nylon screening and a screen mouse roller to push the spline back in.

Another approach is to look into markets where you have friends/family that can generate leads or work with local real estate contacts.

It's a little different for me as a lender, but I learned very VERY early on while driving all over the place from Timbuktu to East Oakland to Vallejo that someone who isn't motivated enough to either a) come to my office or b) upload a W2 and some paystubs and other paperwork, isn't a good use of my time - my conversion rate while I was the "mobile mortgage man" was incredibly low, and my hours worked was ridiculous.

This is my first flip and I take this as a learning experience, breaking even would be a win for me, so I take this safer approach.

It is possible that the industry has wised up to the BRRR approach and penalizes folks for doing a refi too soon.

I honestly believe that the systems are incredibly well suited to their purposes. 

Now if an investor outside of California were to broaden their investments out of their home state and into California's market, I believe they would find properties and deals in abundance due to the fact that there is a mass amount of properties that are either abandoned or forgotten about, unpaid property taxes and preforeclosures are everywhere, and the commercial/industrial portion of unused properties is incredibly widespread especially in the greater Los Angeles area, with new market places and strip malls being built in the suburbs left and right.

I'm in North Jersey pretty close to Jersey City, and I've always thought about finding a condo to purchase and rent, but never looked into it much because I aways saw incredibly high prices.

How do I approach the seller?

I’m so sorry for your incredible loss.