Is it driven by higher rents in that market or what's the underlying factor from what you have seen?  

Currently content is a big factor is rankings. 

Actually the IRS does not tell us what we can invest in, only what is disallowed (life insurance contracts and collectibles).Allowable investments for SDIRA investing include the following:Residential real estate, including: apartments, single family homes, and duplexesCommercial real estate Undeveloped or raw landREITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts)Real estate notes (mortgages and deeds of trusts)Promissory notes Private limited partnerships, limited liability companies, and C corporationsTax lien certificatesOil and gas investmentsPrivate stock offerings, private placementsJudgments/structured settlementsGold bullion Factoring investments

In his experience, Memphis’s higher-than-typical rent-to-price ratio sounded great in theory, but property management turned out to be a huge factor-especially if you’re not local.

See the chart from Fair Isaac Company (FICO) below: FICO Score Pct of Population Default Probability 800 or more 13.00% 1.00% 750-799 27.00% 1.00% 700-749 18.00% 4.40% 650-699 15.00% 8.90% 600-649 12.00% 15.80% 550-599 8.00% 22.50% 500-549 5.00% 28.40% Less than 499 2.00% 41.00% Source: Fair Isaac CompanyAccording to this chart, investors should use corresponding vacancy+tenant-nonperformance factors of approximately 5% for Class A rentals, 10% for Class B and 20% for Class C.To address Class C payment challenges, many industry "experts" are now selling programs to newbie investors about how Section 8 tenants are the cure.

What factors lead to this decision?

This focus gives you a national reach, and that oh-so-important factor; scalability. 

Our pro forma for the self storage property we built was rock solid until we opened the business and a year later I was facing losing everything because of all sorts of factors beyond my control.

However, 95% of it is verbatim what you posted here and I think that's hilarious, as if they are the first person to think of that angle and they're about to catch a bunch of millionaires in their brilliant web. 

I'm sure that factored in to the government trying to find a way to gain ownership of the land and the only solution appeared to be a land swap.