So January 2017, I told myself I will walk away from my Apple job by August of this year.

I'm not sure this is an apples to apples comparison.

The potential for returns in our market and indeed the cash on cash I have achieved in my portfolio suggests that REI can have more upside; albeit, I am not a passive investor so this is not an apples to apples comparison. 

Hello, new to Bigger Pockets but I had a previous rental near Fort Riley KS in Manhattan (The Little Apple) Kansas basically the renters just stopped paying rent for three months before deploying which is meh. 

But at that point we are not comparing apples to apples.

Growth - NV is still friendly to business and a lot of companies (Tesla, Google, Apple, etc) have moved their distribution, manufacturing, data centers here in recent years and there’s more to come.

While in school studying Finance and Marketing at FGCU (you may of heard of this school given their recent cinderella story) I worked for the Apple Computer Corporation.

This is not to say that there are not "bad apples" in the basket, but communicating these issues is how to elevate the situation.

Alternatively, you can also use "total assessed value", which as we know is not indicative of much in a vacuum, but in regard to neighboring properties, you can compare apples to apples (for the most part). 

Look at Apple, they sell the IPhone.