If you had $50k cash and lived in LA, what would you do?

[Julian L.]

Heres my situation: 

I'm house hacking my condo in Santa Monica, owe $346k and its worth about $460k. 

I have about $50k in cash outside of retirement to use toward another property. The ultimate goal is to create some passive income. The problem I'm having is LA is so incredibly expensive, $50K won't do much out here. 

I've thought about:

a) Continuing to save another $50k and use $100k total as a 20% downpayment toward a $500k property in the next 2 years

b) Buying a rental long distance in my college town back in the midwest

c) Trying to pick the next "hot neighborhood" in LA, buying a house here in LA that barely cashflows and pray it goes up in value. (Sounds dumb as I'm typing it out)

d) Another option

Thoughts?