I have known people who have invested in areas where there were no comps - like desert resort areas - and getting financing and reselling were impossible. 

@Nick TaylorThink of what you would do to hire someone to watch your newborn baby for two weeks and you will be out of the country on a deserted island without any type of communication.

I am pretty sure Palm Desert banned AirBNB last year. 

We've got a few rental properties higher up in the desert. 

The Palm Desert area is on our radar at the moment.

So I bought two single families in Desert Hot Springs. 

Perhaps my mistake was not applying to work at Apple when it was still a young company (Young Steve Jobs on how to hire, manage, and lead people), but even Steve Jobs had to leave Apple and wander in the desert for many years before returning to bring the company back from the brink of bankruptcy in the late 1990s.

It's called the Mission Creek strand and it runs through the Coachella Valley, from Indio, through Desert Hot Springs and into the San Bernardino Mountains.

I attached an image showing plenty of inventory outside of that immediate area... any insight on why there is a bit of an inventory desert there?

Urban sprawl has also destroyed most natural habitat in Socal and pushed agricultural land into the desert where cultivation is massively wasteful in resources You can trust my experience, they will make everything in their power to make your life miserable if you try to entitle undelevelopped land in the mountains.