Who’s currently doing it, and willing to offer advice on mitigating the risks?

We would not recommend conducting any fix and flip properties in your own personal name but rather through a corporate structure for more asset protection and tax mitigation so that you limit personal liability exposure with third parties as you do the two deals.

I do recognize the dangers of over leverage but high leverage does not equate to over leverage.  

It can be very dangerous paying for a listing without knowing what terms you are going to be required to agree to. 

Get into details on how renovations are done with units occupied, what systems they use to mitigate tenant fraud on applications, how they set price levels for the units?  

Your State likely has the requirement for you as the Landlord to mitigate your financial losses by putting it up for rent to secure a replacement tenant as quickly as possible, so do that for sure.If your facts are not in dispute, then keep the Security Deposit as liquidated damages, still sending the tenant the mandatory SD reconciliation letter according to your State statutory period to the tenant forwarding mailing address, and be done with it.

If you dont identify, understand, and act to mitigate whatever the initial source of error is, then you run the risk of it happening again and compounding your problems. 

Its extremely dangerous for people to be in a house while an ozone generator is running. 

Avoiding these types of deals will help you mitigate risk as you get started on your investing journey from CA.We have found what works and repeat it as much as funds allow.

Here is an example of a time when that was dangerous.