I know you mentioned interest in investing elsewhere but perhaps this illustration helps narrow down your goals and answers your questions.

I would need gross monthly income projections and your effective tax rate to put an illustrative analysis with my software together for you. 

So a few Californians moving to Boise make it feel (to residents of Boise) like an exodus.Another fun fact to illustrate my point: in 2018, 118K Californians left the state for other states.

I concede that we shouldn't be responsible for supporting the government in the same amount, and will illustrate supporting CA on a sliding scale.

How do you pinpoint areas from a distance, can you still find success in markets like the one I'm illustrating above?

There are many way sellers (or brokers) can manipulate cap rate, so it is important to understand how to value a property yourself and not rely completely what they are demonstrating.To keep it really general, the cap rate is simply an illustration of the expected "rate of return" that investors are currently expecting to receive if they paid cash for a property.

Im going to, for argument's sake, allow our 2br condo to be compared against 2br houses in terms of rental price, partially because it will still illustrate my point, and also, I did not feel like hunting through 1000 listings for apartment complex owned and managed studio-3br listings to find an example. 

Cash Flow Quadrant is another good book to read, by Robert Kiyosaki, and the illustrations provided there might give her a good basic understanding of the differences between the ways people earn money around the world.

So let's get to it...SUPPLY AND DEMAND LEVELSBelow we have two charts that illustrate the level of SF inventory in Dane County.

Let me illustrate - you can borrow 30 year money for under 3.5% right now or you can invest that equity and earn a multiple of that.Debt is a tool like a chain saw - yes, it can be dangerous, but if you know what you are doing and don't become careless it is much faster getting the job done.