Water rates in desert compared to Hawaii.6.brick house compared to particle board.

You may want to consider The high desert as well.  

Facts:- I'm a Rehhaber/Flipper looking to conduct my business from San Bernadino all the   way to Palm Desert...so Basically East of Pasadena.- I know, I know....Zillow sucks for comps.- I love using Redfin- DataQuick, Realtor.com & Remax.com have been the advised methods for Comps  in LA county thus far.So...now that we know all that, does anyone have anything to add?

We are fairly new investors (house hacking in San Diego and single family in Palm Desert) and are interested in investing outside San Diego and California.

Being better off means that if you suffer a large unexpected expense, serious illness, temporary loss of job, major home repair, you can charge it to a credit card and siphon money from your investments over the next year to pay down the credit card gradually instead of being left in a financial desert where you know you will never be able to pay more than the monthly minimum on those cards for the next 20 years, while the principal grows and grows until you'r eventually forced to file bankruptcy.Being better off means, if a catastrophic potentially life-ruining event occurs, you can sell one property or take a large piece of your investment money, handle the otherwise catastrophic potentially life-ruining event, and still have more net worth than 93% of all Americans.All of that reduces latent stress on the brain. 

.: @Stephanie Kern taxes cannot be $315 a year...But I really have no stake in this, just encouraging you to be conservative...I just double checked and they were $303 for 2021 and $330 for 2022 so yep, cheap cheap here in the desert! 

@Chad Lanting no, I was thinking more the CA desert cities that I keep hearing about tightening regulations.

I grew up in the land business and my dad routinely flipped 500 properties a year for many many years.but this is a big business we had 20 salemen/women working for us.. we had 6 office staff  5k a week in door hangers and mailers etc etc. there is no secret to this NONE.... those guys mentioned above work the high deserts or remote land counties were lots are bought and sold at tax sale or inherited etc.. pick an area start writing letters offer cash.. its easier to sell these days you can use craigslist or bid for assets and it is simply the greater fool theory. as 95% of the properties have little long term value.. but there is always someone that will buy a 2 to 10k parcel on terms..  

There's that guy in Palm Desert who spent 10 years in court over a Holiday Inn (i think) where the place went to tax auction but where the prior owner filed bk under some sort of exotic foreign trust.

A pool of water (17,000 gallons) costs around $19 in the desert.