However, I also incorporate appreciation potential, price, area/rental traffic, rental history, tenant demographics, logistics, regional history, etc. and it's hard to know all that if you're not intimately familiar with the area.

I was friendly with some of the office staff and would ask about demographics for my RE "research".

The location and demographics will be critically important, but in their successes it seems like a repositioned center will have as an anchor one of the following: major gym, movie theater, discount apparel store (TJ Maxx, Ross, DD's Discount), hobby store, general discount store (99c Store, Dollar General).

I would not recommend simply writing off the previous owner as not marketing properly, the property might be difficult to rent (tons of things that factor into this: location, oversaturation, demographics, psychographics, etc).

You have to know which neighborhoods and property types have the highest potential for appreciation given changing demographics and the underlying health of the local economy.I have a feeling that giant sucking sound of dollars flowing out of California will meet with disappointment ...

Tim, I like it because it's smaller and easier to wrap your head around.And there's less driving (which, as any Rhode Islander will tell you, is a scary thing - see http://s3.amazonaws.com/citybuzz/2014/07/rhodeisla...)There's less competition, but the #s are also smaller which means that, say compared to Boston, the profits generally are smaller so you have to work a little harder.In general I don't view RI as being particularly business friendly, nor this part of the country to have favorable economic/demographic trends.

You can do target marketing where you choose certain houses by age demographics. 

You need boots on the ground for certain, as well as, zip code specific demographics on market cycles and trends in each area you explore, check with the Economic Development council locally aware of development in the area and future plans.  

Also learning about your demographic or your market can help guide the perfect tenant towards your rental.

clientele – is the nature of clientele changes from state to state or the same demographic group that rents in the west will be my clientele in the east?