Both have good job growth and population growth whereas some of the others are stagnant and even declining.

For example, if you're buy and holding in an area that could possibly see a 10% decline in rents and 10% decline in vacancy, I would analyze the deal with those numbers to ensure that -- if that worst-case scenario happens -- you still have cash flow or at least know what your likely out-of-pocket costs are each month.-  You should take into account the class of housing. 

Absent a clear statement by the IRS declaring the rents become mine just because I store them in my bank account, I decline to worry about prosecution for not reporting them as income to me. 

you take other cities and lots are worthless many times and areas are in bad state of decline and values of existing properties are measured in the teens per foot  ..

She declined that offer, but then I offered to buy as much as she could gather, with the understanding that 100% of it would be donated to charity and she happily accepted. 

All it means is having two consecutive quarters of declining GDP.

If the market levels off or even declines here in CA over the next 5 years, as many think it will, you will have negative equity in your own home and that is never a good thing. 

Even when home prices declined 50% from 2007 to 2011, rents did not drop.

We could focus on sales volume declining by 27% from December, but volume always declines from December.Sales volume in January 2017 was 14% higher than last year.One year ago in January it was taking 4 days longer to sell.FHA sales volume is down 6% this year compared to 2016 (but 27% of all sales were FHA last month).Only 3% of all sales were bank-owned last month and 2.4% were short sales.The average price per sq ft was about $202 last month (about the same as December, but 8% higher than last year).The average sales price softened 1% last month and is currently $339,028.

The only concern I have in his strategy is that I am afraid of building a machine and 10-30 years down the road I have this great income beginning to decline because properties are coming off the books.