As the heart of LA gets increasingly expensive, more professionals are moving further south toward the 10.As to your question: yeah, for any traditional loan, your income is going to limit your borrowing power.

However, if the appraiser was referring to the style of house, such as tutor versus mid-century modern versus Cape Cod versus traditional, etc, then yes, that has some merit.

The first was a SFH home that I wanted to buy but didn't have enough Cash to get traditional financing.

Very mild winters with little to no snow means homes sell year round. 

Families don't want to move during the school year and snow is an issue.  

2) Given my age (47), goals (cash-flow for retirement; longer-term wealth), and the fact that financing would have to be non-traditional (while I have access to a bit of cash, we are entrepreneurs whose tax returns do not look good in the most recent few years), is considering multi-family my best option? 

The issue i'm running into is that many mortgage companies will not finance condo purchases, even with a sizable down payment.Does anyone have experience in non-conforming lending that would allow me to put 20-30% down on a condo with a traditional 30 year mortgage?  

Strangely enough this one was not an ancient home either (built in the late 70s) and is worth pretty good money (150's now, was 200's at one time).

I assume you are thinking you can borrow the down payment and couple that with a more traditional/conventional type loan? 

Be ready to have a plan laid out in timeline (usually two years before traditional financing and you're saving up funds to make larger down payment during this time or pay cash to sellers directly), who will cover repairs, taxes etc. and it can be great for them to know that you would be taking care of the property as your own now (level of care) because you truly want to buy it at the end terms and exercise the right to purchase.