There seems to be a lot of anti-gentrification and anti-development sentiment which concerns me a little.

You'll want to google Nj anti eviction act to see the various reasons someones tenancy can be terminated and the required notice periods.Your best bet is if tenant leaves voluntarily at end of lease and hence no notice required on your side.  

If it's hot water instead of electric, then the whole system will need to be flushed and re-filled with anti-freeze.

They just passed what I consider to be a very anti-investor ordinance that has a lot of difficult rules around crime-free housing.

if mandatedThere's too much of this anti gentrification stuff going around, with rent control then they force landlords to spend $100-150k on retrofitting their buildings?

There are plenty of folks on the forums who are anti-turnkey, but you also want to evaluate it from several positions:1) You have a W2 job and don't plan to quit it to do full time real estate.2) You have no connections whatsoever in a marketplace that you like.3) You want to avoid the cost and time overhead of linking all the pieces together.Well oiled turnkey operations do make their money up front.

. - Dallas, Memphis, etc. while CA is losing jobs/anti-landlord/etc.) that will help with tenant and income stability.

Especially when after a pretty short time I can be sending a couple hundred a month to pay down the principal elsewhere.I'm totally anti HOA for properties I live in.

I can account for the potential PMs attitude other than anti-steering laws, but that doesn't apply to what you're doing.  

The city is actively trying to shut down the short term rental industry by using their most powerful, anti-business weapon-Tax.