As far as something around your said purchase price, I would also recommend Columbus, OH for a starter market/somewhere to plant your investment roots.

@Michael Plante and as Michael said, try to find a mentor. 

I'm purely independent now, working as a landscaper and selling plants (starting a nursery business).

I hate to restrict myself to any market.In short, focus is the key here, I need to put some thought to it, a rough goal by Dec 2020 might be to own another property and have all doors rented and managed with scalable systems and processes in place.I wrote a bunch more but let’s keep this short I do need that focus, I get on task and then begin expanding and expanding until I’m writing about a smart city 100% self sustaining sitting on a massive geothermal plant  and utilizing other tech and renewable sources, getting all residents tax refunds due to excess energy leak into the grid. 

First Solar recently built a second plant, and Amazon is building a distribution center, both of which will add a large number of jobs.

Yes, southern California will always have people living there, but in the future, most of said people, might be ones able to & willing to pay for expensive water, much of it, supplied out of the Pacific Ocean, through de-salinization plants.

Think about all the brokers chasing that Amazon HDQ2 deal from all over the country, or car plants, or chip plants.Not sure it is true, but I expect the washout rates for both residential and commercial realtors is just slightly lower than for wholesalers. 

is there endangered species, plant or animal?

Whether a property has a chemical plant on it or a parking lot going back over the past 50 years, raises, obviously, different concerns.

For landscaping, we keep the lawn small or non-existant, install native drought resistant plants watered via a drip system, and use large quantities of mulch and/or gravel for ground cover.