You need to get your name and phone number out there in front of people who might want to sell their properties quickly.Common examples are sending letters to owners of properties, for example all out of state owners in a city, or owners who are getting divorced, or landlords who recently evicted someone, etc.Also common is Google SEO advertising, Facebook campaigns, putting signs on telephone poles ("bandit signs"), putting fliers out in the community, dropping business cards in certain locations, paying for billboards or radio or TV ads, etc.At some point you will need to make a decision on whether you have (or want to spend) more time, or more money.

Perfect opportunity to lock in great appreciation before a potential slight downturn, and having collected the rent roll, relative to the lower purchase price, along the way.Even if Union City not overvalued, but some drop can happen, and is in fact my base case scenario.

California is getting awfully expensive and the laws seem to be becoming pretty anti-landlord at the moment...If I gave you any advice, it would be to not let your enthusiasm drop and keep moving in the direction of taking action. 

Care to drop any hints about good locations for such rentals?

Prices also drop during those times.

But, as a rule of thumb I usually tell people to take the ADR it gives you and drop it by 20% to get a better ball park number of real Average Daily Rate. 

Sure, this is what you do.Try to go to local open houses and ease-drop on the visitors.

Yah, when I read the first contract and saw that I would have to still pay them if terminated, my heart kind of dropped.

You will end up with a 4.3 or 4 stars and it you will see your bookings start to drop off.

The project had massive scope creep so it was difficult to pin him down on a final price when he was in the middle of working.