Outside of the bay area and LA, the markets in CA to consider seems to be Ventura County, Fresno, San Bernardino county/Inland Empire, San Fernando Valley, and Orange County.

The reason for the longer payback period in relation to the property being LISTED is... on average in Orange county (Orlando) it takes 60 days to get an offer on the MLS... in this buyers experience it's taken 4-5 months to get a house sold and if the new buyer has traditional financing that could take 30-45-60 days to close...

Also note that zoning changes will take a while and they may ask for an arm and a leg for some of of the changes ( just to change from Commercial to residential on ground floor, I had to plant trees (7.5k total cost digging, their special grates are 1K per tree), use a certain type of siding  (Hardy) that cost a lot of money).

Land in the path of progress  carefully chosen Timber or AG tracts etc etc.. so there is many ways to slice the real estate orange up.. end of the day though the true measure is IRR not COC .. that is if your ever going to stop being a landlord..

So doing a little leg work when I start shopping isn't really that bad since at this point it only takes a few months to find a good deal (so far).I own an insurance agency and never realized how many opportunities I come across through clients.

Very few capital improvements have been done in decades, mechanicals are on their last leg and it turns more into a game of musical chairs with investors trading them, you don't want the music to stop when you own it or you might be putting in 2 of everything. 

Hopefully this will prevent me putting the cart before the four legged quadroped.We have enough cash that we could have had 70% equity from the start.

Currently doing 10-15 flips at the same time in Broward, Palm Beach, Dade and Orange County in FL. 

If you keep a lot of the dark brown then I could see going with a lime green or bright orange front door. 

Hi I'm a new investor from the Bay Area looking to buy a SFH in Orange county.