On a side note, I had pipes freeze at one of my units last weekend, I spent two hours on my back in a crawl space with a hair dryer.  

To understand what you want better, let me try to summarize what you want:You are looking for a good snowbird home that you can live in during the winter months so you dont freeze your a$$ off.

Then all of the wholesalers in the area stop sending them deals and they get freezed out.

Below are some generalizations about locations and ongoing maintenance costs: Older properties require more maintenance than newer properties.Composition roofs require more maintenance than tile roofs.Properties in climates with hard freezes require more maintenance than properties in milder climates.Properties in locations with a lot of moisture require more maintenance than properties in dryer climates.Wood siding requires more maintenance than aluminum or stucco siding.Properties with lush vegetation require more maintenance than properties with little or no vegetation.SummaryUsing the above criteria and considerations, I believe you will be able to narrow your focus to a small set of cities.

We have a considerable amount of snow on the ground here and the temperature has rarely gone above freezing since mid January.It looks like it is going to warm up a bit and when it does there is probably about 2 days of exterior painting to do. 

Then I freeze.

.• Composition roofs require more maintenance than tile roofs• Properties in climates with hard freezes require more maintenance than properties in milder climates.• Properties in locations with a lot of moisture require more maintenance than properties in dryer climates.• Wood siding requires more maintenance than aluminum or stucco siding.• Properties with lush vegetation require more maintenance than properties with little or no vegetation.When you look at the maintenance elements in a residential property you can generally divide the elements into two groups: systems and the structure.• Systems include HVAC, water heater, plumbing and wiring.

"January is not the best time to re-rent"Even worse time to have a non paying freeloading tenant run out of oil, freeze the pipes and have to evict.

I have a foreclosure property under contract however I am afraid that there may be water damage due to freezing temperatures.

I wouldn't separate the utilities but I would try to save some water cost by adding a hot water circulating pump to the hot water heater...that basically makes it so when they turn on the hot water it's instantly hot instead of having to wait a minute for it to get hot....another benefit of the hot water circulating pump is that it helps prevent pipes from freezing in the winter, turn off the outside spigot so people can't steal water, have a plumber go through the 4 plex and look for leaks and replace any toilet flaps...replace any toilets that are water hogs.