Although I'm extremely biased to New Orleans my advice on choosing a city is travel and visit as many of these places as possible even if it's just weekend trips. 

Why did you travel across the entire U.S. to go to college? 

Through this corp you would be able to get fringe benefits like medical reimbursement plan, you could deduct your business related expense, you can take a salary and contribute to a pension plan, you could hire your son or other family member with lower tax bracket to offer them also other benefits.

People with good credit are rewarded with same.a little off topic but when i was activly HML in Mississippi I had a pretty significant LOC with Trustmark .. and when talking to my banker there he told me they really focused on the medical profession.. providing all the capital for those folks to buy their homes with minimal down include the furniture and cars etc etc.. i could not figure out how these under 40 doctors were living in million dollar homes with 300k in toys :)  the banker said once we have these doctors as clients we have them for life and their entire banking needs.My personal banker in Oregon their bank really goes after Dentists .. and they do the same thing.  

Financially it probably makes sense to sign a lease with these applicants rather than leave the property vacant for an unknown period, even if it means not collecting pet rent or additional deposit.My question is: Would you push the issue for the "service dogs" and make the applicants provide a letter from a medical professional? 

I’ve been shopping for SFH but realtors are either not sending what I ask for or they act like they really dont want to travel to the area Im interested in.

You might benefit more from looking at the experiences and investing habits of high function professionals like medical professionals, professional athletes and successful business folk in other time demanding fields.  

Medical is a good example as is Real Estate ( I just leased some space to a real estate brokerage).Once you get office leased it is much nicer than MF.

lots of travel and relocation, getting burned on projects, office politics, ect. 

Real Estate Investing is all fun and games until you need medical insurance.