The idea is similar to modern day pioneers looking for an area to build a new home in a better environment than we are currently in.My question: Does anyone have any suggestions as to how we could incorporate this lifestyle with building a real estate portfolio? 

My thing is i just want the tenants to live peacefully and comfortably without getting in each others ways.

Personally given your budget and familial situation I would lean to tier 1... thats my gut.There are conflicting schools of thought which are generally going to be tied to your willingness to risk and the general environment.

We generally like to keep our tenants happy and care about the environment so we didn't think twice about saying yes, even though all utilities are included in the rent.

The most important thing is to build in a margin of safety, which is very hard in today's environment.

She is extremely experienced in dealing in representing landlords with tennat issues.Finances, real estate, investing all extremely valuable information to acquire but if you want to survive  our nanny state pro tennat environment learn the system.

the increase in housing inventory in Halifax, particularly high-rises:  i believe the bigger developers are (rightly) taking advantage of cheap money (ie. low interest rates) which, as a strategy, 1) is a better investment than anything else in our economic environment, and 2) lowers the the holding costs, thus increasing the arbitrage between interest rates and the sale to individual buyers - who may be buying more than they can afford long-term due to the relatively low interest rates that these individuals are also benefiting from. 

#Scottsdale Emotional and physical well being: (We have plenty of bars and that doesn't do it we have plenty of events with drinks)Income and employment: Depends on what you do, but Real Estate is not on par with the majority of the income earned hereCommunity and environment: (We have plenty of bars and that doesn't do it we have plenty of events with drinks)Like others have said take it with a grain of salt.....Like living in Scottsdale and the above is a joke if some of you don't get it :)

There's been a lot of co-working space coming online but we need to land a few large biotech type tenants down there so it becomes more of a "live, work, play" environment downtown.

If you work y our deals the right way, the small amount of interest you will pay is worth the peace of mind.I wish you lots of success!