Be very careful though because if you still have a letter from 3 months ago your purchasing power may have decreased.

One of the best piece of advice I recently got is that knowledge is not power.

This is the boat I'm in. 

@Cassandra Lesa hi cassandra, rent by the room is all that i do. there are local ordinances (normally) to watch out for. for example, they may limit the number of unrelated people in each unit to a certain number. if the limit is 4 and you have a 3 bedroom single family (one unit), that would not fly with the town. however, if you can pull off this strategy, it is worth it and very powerful. i am always happy to help. i also write for the BP Blogs. i have written several articles about the benefits and pitfalls of this strategy. 

We learned to get creative in our bidding and the power of persistence and believing in your ultimate goal.

I'm actually in the exact same boat as I'm looking at 5+ units in the Bay Area and still in the early stages.Regarding it being too simple - I think this perspective is a great one on the forced appreciation model within a seller's market: Trust that there are others who are trying to do exactly what you are, and that gets factored into people bidding up the purchase price and the compressed cap rates.

Facebook can also be STUPIDLY powerful for selling flips, networking (which you should be doing on Biggerpockets as well), and generating motivated seller leads. 

In general its going to be important for you to get pre-approved regardless, so you at least know where you sit in the market and what your purchasing power is.

However, I want to preface this by saying this is definitely not a small undertaking in terms of cost or work involved, and will most definitely require permits and inspections with both your municipality and the power company.Specifically for the electric service, my recommendation is to upgrade to a 3-gang meter socket: one meter for each unit and then one for common area electric. 

If the backyard is underwhelming, it's easy to put in a pool.One thing you will never have the power to do is get rid of that school.