Use your "gut" to be able to steer away from scams, bad deals, and bad life choices that will bring you down.

If the low end motel is in a reasonable part of the city, I would say that it's one of the safest places to be in the city - even safer than living in a normal house.

I have this math in an excel spreadsheet and I verify and plug the info in, this graphic is simply to illustrate to tenants how the choice was made.

I like real estate because of choices.

You then have the choice of 1)  Buying out the 1st lien  2)  Letting it go at FC and hoping there is something left over for you.  

I am still new to all of this and with time and education I will start narrowing down my cities of choice.

However, we can get more doors elsewhere.Writing this down makes it seem like a clear choice that getting more units would be the right choice, but would there be advantages in getting ONE deal in SoCal over multiple smaller deals out of state?

Walking away at this point is a perfectly good choice too.

Everyone has personal choice.

Multi units are you safest start point for beginners when cash flow is the priority.Put as small of a DP as possible as equity in a rental is basically money lying dead eating up your cash flow.Screening of tenants is your number one priority and keep in mind buying a occupied unit will likely require getting rid of tenants and replacing with your own selection.