Of course, with all things, the answers to all these matters will depend on the circumstances.California tends to have more laws on the books and requirements and restrictions that it can be a good idea to form a CA LLC for out of state property so that you as a CA resident are covered, and to try to have your contracts fall under the purview of CA courts.

I know most PMs already have go-to contractors for most things but I also know from experience that good contractors tend to get busy or scale to a point where quality suffers.For the professional property managers of the world, how often do you get solicited by new vendors and what can a new one do to convince you to give them a chance?

At that ARV I would ask your agent how many days on market to expect or which lender people tend to use. 

If you can take out lines of credit on other properties you own, I prefer that to going the hard money/private lender route, because it tends to be significantly cheaper.

I live 10 minutes or so from Fair Park in East Dallas so tend to invest in my immediate area (which is already an expensive area) but can see the edges of old East Dallas and the Fair Park/Expo park area blurring. 

In both scenario's, they tend to be very successful :)

I will add that the rental prices of condos tend to be more similar to multi-family housing than SFH and in the greater Phoenix MSA a lot of new multi-family units have been built in the past couple years with more on the way, so rents have softened.

I and many other investors tend to underestimate rehab expenses so it's a great idea to build in some cushion. 

While we have good facilities management, I cannot say my cleaner is the absolute best and is head and shoulders above the rest.People tend to hire us who are too busy to talk to guests, do the pricing, etc. 

Some investors thrive in this type of market knowing they will have strong equity growth as regulation tends to lead to fewer players, fewer available rentals and therefore higher prices (rents and property value).