Assuming no meaningful upgrades are made to the property (i.e., this is not BRRRR), is there an advantage of doing one over the other?

As an amenity, it’s a selling point for managers who know the Denver market.The previous owners of the Fletcher Southland's were investors focused on extracting cashflow from the property instead of re-investing the necessary capital back into the property to force property appreciation.

The note on it is 438K and I want to do enough work to extract 88k worth of value out of it.

Depending on your current overall tax situation, you might want to extract some of the equity (to gain some tax advantages) and redeploy it somewhere better (if you can do that) - then you should look into an asset based LOC or cash out refinance loan.  

Or is county/city level too broad to be meaningful?

That would be theft.You will be much better off finding an attorney or advisory firm that can integrate the LLC with the overall IRA setup & administrative services and meaningful consultations related to maintaining compliance with IRS rules. 

True, your dollar will go much further in Kansas City than in Denver, but the number of units you want to own has nothing to do with whether or not you'll accomplish your investing goals...I mean real goals, meaningful goals.

Please reach out, we can grab coffee, you can attend one of our monthly happy hours, and we can build meaningful relationships.

All the equipment and knowledge are there to do those extraction and quality control.

Nothing short term will impact the base area demand in a meaningful way.My $0.02...best of luck to you.