Those houses that seem so tempting because they are cheap?

I currently live in Fountain Valley which is a "stone throw" away from Cypress, let me know if you need a little recon work done on a specific property, I can drive by the property for you.The space/lot rent in mobile parks in this area has been something that I struggle with.

But if you could lower your overhead by house-hacking, not only are you saving the $ difference every month, you're no longer throwing money away on rent, while building equity through loan paydown and property appreciation and taking advantage of rising rental income over time (plus various tax benefits). 

Throwing yourself at it is fine... just be smart. 

If they aren't interested in a lower price, they'll just throw your correspondence in the trash.

It's more work.I don't think there are any upsides to owning rent stabilized apts so you need to buy it at an acceptable Cash Flow that pays you reasonably well for all the risk and work you will be doing to own it.It may be cheap, but is it cheap enough?

If it cash flows, and you decide to self manage to make it cash flow more, that's great, but if it doesn't cash flow without you it's probably not a deal.Option 3: Same opinion as option 2.Option 4: I like this one, but refer to option 1 about doing plenty of research and not putting all eggs in 1 basket.Option 5: (You missed this one so I figured I'd throw it in for good measure) Real estate notes, probably not in the Bay Area (though possibly if you got lucky)  You can pick a market not so inflated that still looks solid for appreciation and population growth and fund a fix and flip buy or possibly a builder (both shorter term hopefully) or a fix and flip to owner finance guy like me for a longer term safer returns. 

The money is cheap right now, especially if you can lock it in at a 30 year fixed rate, which is why I'm increasing my leverage now. 

Cheap rates, weekends, holidays."

Find out what they require of their new agents and how much it costs to obtain and maintain this license and assess whether or not these costs justify whatever you have intended in your full or part-time real estate career.The process isn't cheap by any means, but you can minimize costs depending on where you decide to hang the license.