Ultimately, I couldn’t stomach the thought of a neighborhood of several hundred, identical, higher end homes.

We had them kill an existing offer and take our pretty much identical offer.

You also couldn’t redecorate as all rooms had to be as close to identical as possible. 

I bet his answer is identical today.

One fundamental thing you must do before anything else is to positively establish the identity of your applicant.

As with all online searches in the era of Cell Phones the Phone #'s may be out of date.I and a colleague ran a test of several entry level skip traces sites such as BeenVerified, Intellius (I use this one), Speakeo, usa-people-search, etc and found them to be almost identical. 

You will get more for your money in those states compared to CA, & AZ.  2-4 units are priced much lower in those markets with identical rents in most counties.If you want to buy along borders that are being gentrified it would offer better price points and ROI. 

You also lose a little be of brand Identity and credibility if you jump from place to place. 

Because identity theft is a real threat to most savvy rental applicants, you can wind up limiting the number of potential tenants willing to apply to your property.

They both have similar housing stock and an almost identical tenant base.