I recently went to my towns building department to inquire about changing zoning on a property and pretty much got puzzled looks that its pretty much impossible to change the zoning.

Hence, I only know of one part of you puzzle, as you compare where you now live in California, to Treasure Valley, Idaho.

Of course there is a risk in every investment and there are a few additional parts in the puzzle of long distance investing that need to be mastered in order to lower the risk.

@Nicole Cotrino - If curious for context/comparison, my cap is 45 minutes on the first call if it's a referral, 30 minutes if it's someone that called me out of the blue (so, yeah, saying "Fred said I should call you" will get you an extra 15 minutes), and BPers honestly have some interesting questions and puzzles to think through (which I enjoy) so I've been doing 45-60 minutes for you guys more or less since I joined.My goal during that 30 minutes or so is for that consumer to understand more about mortgages and how mortgage financing works than they learned in the previous 50 nervous hours on google, BP, wikipedia, from the last 3 homes they purchased, and so on.

Also for the month of July we just received another check which is why I was a bit puzzled.

The other big piece of the puzzle before letting a tenant move-in is who is going to pay the monthly rent.  

I try to keep current, so I was puzzled by what you originally posted. 

Then, you hand them back their ink pen to go with the crossword puzzle book by the toilet - and hand them their invoice.

@Mike Kratz, with all those puzzle pieces in play you're absolutely right to think about some strategic use of the 1031. 

I think management is the key to the low income puzzle.