Bonk yourself in the head or snap a rubber band against your wrist any time you start thinking of price per square foot; price per square foot only carries weight with consumers trying to fight appraisals, not with appraisers. 

I’m at the very front end of my journey but I’m working hard to narrow things down so I’m not shooting blindly into the night.

The first step is to determine how much time you can devote to real estate investing: it will help you narrow your focus to either passive or active RE investing.

you could play the arbitrage game and borrow at 4 or 5 on your heloc then use those funds to invest with a really good HML in Bend that is doing short term flips probably make 10 to 12 gross and net 5% to 7% on your arbitrage..or you could just use the money for quick turn and burns.. if you have the band width to do those.. 

Gardner As @John Warren pointed out, you have to narrow down to one area of focus. 

And the really dedicated probate practitioners spend a few thousand each year for hours of continuing legal education.Can you narrow that down a bit?

I am sure within the area that you will find areas with properties that are costly and others that are more affordable.I think you need to narrow your search a little more and then ask for advice within that area.

There's a small pond on the land, but most of the 'wetland' is just due to elevation and it runs in a narrow band diagonally across the nearly square parcel, dipping the most in the center where the pond is, the rest is dry most of the time....just not build-able where zoned wet. 

I am having a hard time narrowing down the best market and most reliable company.

Cameras can be a good deterence, but it can be really hard to actually find anything on the recorded video footage unless you have a pretty narrow window of time.