Historically the Oakland market has had good appreciation and investors often refinance in less than 5 years to extract equity. 

Contact the utility provider and get an historical average based on the last year of use.

Rates are definitely going up but are currently still historically low so I would not be concerned about it being a "high" rate because it is not.

I can't speak for an industrial building but I've worked with several historic residential homes built similarly out here in AZ.In fact the home I live in was built 65 years ago and has a lot of exposed block throughout.

Good thing is (at least historically) is that over time the rents come up to balance the price relatively quickly....so if you can use a strategy to just hold a property (without being over leveraged) for 5+ years the investment will likely work out for you....IE use a large down payment or house-hacking. 

We got spoiled off low rates, but as far as historical averages go, these rates are pretty fair.

@James M Smith    In general... military discounts would have a disparate impact against women because the military has historically discriminated against women and less than 20% of military personnel are women. 

They can often give you an estimate based on historical use. 

To add some additional insight, we have the opportunity to take the equity from the sale, payoff our mortgage on our historic home we house hack as a MTR and add $50k of expenses back into our pockets annually without a mortgage. 

Historically, a long-term hold (10+ years) has played out very well for owners, as it's a slow and steady market (the last couple of years aside) that has held value in most of the asset classes, with condos in 2008-2011 being the exception.