People love to live near the water :)If you can find something near the oceanfront area, you can get higher rents. 

for most of the meetups, groups, landlords and reia groups, we try to post them all (if they have a lot of members in our group or if their leaders are a part of our organization) on our calendarwww.MAREI.org - we only post a month at a time.WinVestors every wednesday at 9am so you can hit 2 more before the end of the year.MAREI meets on the 2nd Tuesday so the next meeting is in January.There is a Blue Springs Group I have heard of the Northland Group, but I don't know anyone with that group.There is a KCK Landlord Group, a Cass County Landlord Group, a JOCO Landlord Group and also a Eastern Jackson County REI Group that meets in Buckner.

There were multiple times when I was living there during the four years that there was a water leak and caused damage to the apartment and dampened the carpet.

I had a 800k house in Washington county. which was on septic and private water tax's were 6k a year total.. not bad.

I'm assuming I should call now to get the utilities(water/sewer) in my company name with an expected start date.

If possible get one on town water and sewer, underground utilities and paved roads.Check out the Start Here page http://www.biggerpockets.com/starthereLocate and attend 3 different local REIA club meetings great place to meet people gather resources and info.

,I see a lot of listed properties that have one or more utilities in common.There was one in Caldwell that had Electricity shared between 2 units, and a lot of them have either water or gas shared between one or all units.Anyone have any experience in separating out utilities(Electricity OR Water OR Gas)?

One unit has bedrm and bath closed off due to water damage, it's currently rented as a 1BR but could be repaired and rented out as 2BR probably for an additional $200-300/mo.This seems like a steal, assuming everything checks out with house inspection etc, but what makes me most nervous is I'm not planning to do this full time, I have a job and I can't be driving up there every week to coordinate the repairs and check on them.

Look for water stains on the ceilings, or obvious drywall repairs, potentially indicating a leak.  

. - Water damage is a big one.