I avoid pulling comps from properties  on the other side of Main  Streets that border the property. 

The area is residential bordering on industrial. 

California is not the market for cash flow, it is the market for appreciation which is speculation (gambling).

You can't confine your Central Florida rental search to just the small borders of Orlando city proper.

Either  1) You have the money to be cashflow negative (including mortgage) for a hold and flip with appreciation (gamble) 2) If you had the skills, you could find fixer-uppers and flip or improve equity and hold (safer) 3) Or you could be new developments that are ready in 1-2 years and flip them which I have done quite successfully.

While we were never overtly irresponsible with money (i.e. gambling debt, drug habits, credit cards, expensive cars), we moved many times, did PhDs, and spent the better part of our 20's and 30's doing things that might have been personally enriching, but were at some level exploitative of our time and not financially beneficial.

I lived on the Lowell/Avalon border of MA before the brutal April winters forced me down to the south.

This is perhaps a larger gamble.  

Northwest Indiana in particular is full of Potential and considered a suburb of Chicago as it lays close to the border of Illinois. 

Now if it has border up windows or a hole in the roof, that's a different story.