Outside the city limits of both towns there is more flexibility, but you want to be sure about what you can do with a property before you get under contract.I'm happy to help strategize more!

Rentals don't make sense in my city and the competition for value add is insane.

You will find a TON of awesome people here on the forums representing our city who are willing to help you along your journey.My biggest suggestion would be to find some local meetups (https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/521/topics/1211616-virt...) and introduce yourself to the host.

I want to use the equity in my CA home for the downpayment"me: "gasp" there was very popular post a few years back and LA based investor took out a large HELOC on their personal residence so they could buy 8 units in a mid west city.. that he admitted were D class and on paper the cash flow was huge etc etc.. 

It will contribute to the importance of insurance (and contracts).I leased a Panama City, Florida, bay front fixer from a man that lived/worked out of the country.

The tenant is paying their portion of the rent (the majority is coming from city) but the tenant has been difficult to deal with and I'd like to find an new tenant once their lease is up.

While cities, as a whole, are also able to change rules, typically those take far more time, and allow for more people to share input first.  

We've strived to learn from other tech-enabled property managers and firms who have failed to scale effectively and implement those learnings in our scaling to now 180 cities across California and Washington state.For what it's worth:We have over 170 4-star or greater online reviews. 

On Monday, we presented our 253-unit townhome Planned Unit Development (PUD) to the City Commission and received a favorable 4/5 vote!

I have a rental in a new rural development that does not have city garbage pickup.