Sometimes it helps to get creative...Now, on a personal level, I'm active duty military, so we've been frequent renters and occasional buyers of SFH... wall and carpet color don't matter to me one bit... but they DO matter to my wife. 

/construction for the last 4 years.Very into building engineering at the moment but would like to cultivate financial freedom via buy and hold multi family properties and an occasional flip.

I am also originally from Cleveland, and currently I live in the Bay Area (occasionally I feel tempted to move back to Cleveland as you did... but then I remember what January can be like and that notion is quickly extinguished).

All our properties are cash purchases with the help of our HELOC and occasionally some private money.

I do occasionally borrow against my 401k for real estate, but again, it was a standard employer plan (back when I had an employer). 

We will occasionally visit a local brewery, that's about it.

There is occasional turnover, and while that does take more effort, we have it down to a science… our last empty unit we listed for 4 HOURS on Zillow and had 57 inquiries that got us 6 qualified applicants and cost us about $2.50 to list on Zillow. again, being a full time job this is really child’s play as to how much time the typical occurrences take.  

So if we can get a good price on this first one, it's a good investment move regardless of if we go through a correction.I'm not expecting a crash, but regional corrections and the occasional crash will happen.

Commissions have always been negotiable here, and we’ve been seeing 2% fees offered to buyers agents occasionally for a few years already.

Paula Pant also has a good perspective on the topic and touches on it occasionally in her podcast, Afford Anything.