With the area being less economically 'booming' vs other regions in CA yet seemingly at least private home inventory is quite low, what's it like for these other opportunities here?

It’s the capital with lots of state jobs and state, ahem, “supporting” jobs and companies so everything is mean reverting including unemployment (good), property values (bad for REI), economic busts (good), economic booms (bad), cost of living (good).In fact, maybe the greatest feature of SC PA is that it’s Metropolitan but still mostly suburban and the COL is low enough that you can escape a dozen weeks a year to other places like Hilton Head, Vail and Wailea.

You're getting what you paid for a "rent collector" and that's about it, they aren't going to lift a finger to go out and look at your properties, meet a contractor, go to an HOA meeting, the list goes on and on......

Is there a local real estate tax collector or other person (neighbor or mailman, etc.) that could point you in the right direction?

Downtown Rome is booming and growing, and rents have been going up steadily for a while now.We found the following house, and would love to live in it or rent it or AirBnB it.

I could see value added by matching the work with a skilled collector.

It is booming and will continue.

If this were 2020 and we had already surpassed the previous peak, I'd definitely be telling people to just wait until the boom is over and we're down at the bottom.But as it stands now, you can purchase property that cash flows today and will be worth more in several years and the rents will be higher.

Google Sheets FTW, here plug in the numbers and see if that DTI box is red or green, boom there's your answer.You will spot a REI non-friendly lender in about 2 seconds when they start telling you about how the rental income from the property you are purchasing needs to  be on your tax returns to count that rental income.

Las Vegas has a reputation of being a boom/bust town, and history has proven that reputation to be true.