I'm focusing on buying where there is population and job growth, i.e. the Lehi (South Salt Lake County and North Utah County), and I'm staying away from less stable but cheaper markets/cities.  

The benefit of the outskirts of town: easier to find new place to build, land is cheaper, still in the path of gentrification and appreciation due to proximity to SLC market, no HOA to deal with, much less permitting and red tape, and these lead to new builds, which has the benefits of maximizing costseg and minimizing maintenance and repairs because the build is brand new.Happy to discuss by videoconference if you want, and I can pay you for your time. 

In theory, solar power is cheaper that what the local utility charges so you could generate an (small) income off of your solar investment.

Preferably whichever one is cheaper to fix and/or will bring the better return. 

The difficult part right now is money is expensive to borrow, a lot of buyers are on the sidelines waiting for borrowing to get cheaper. 

Cheaper and easier.

In other words, it may be cheaper to drop your rate $100 and keep the current renter in place.Sit down with paper and consider the costs of each decision.

Most in CA that are just starting out often  look to cheaper markets.  

in part because most good cash flow properties are in cheaper markets where I cannot achieve same level of return from value add and in general do not have same level of market appreciation.  

sourceid=chrome-insta...This is one of the links in the search, that looks like what you want:http://www.watersignal.com/I guess you'd have to figure out if this was cheaper than just sub-metering the units and worth the hassle.