Needed to find better value also as you pointed out.The title of this thread is 'driving for dollars worked' so glad we are circling back to finding off market deals. 

We are here in Minneapolis and most larger properties CoC are a little better than what you are describing. 

After all we are taught to buy low and sell high...Despite all that, I just bought a facility for .50 cents on the dollar ($19 per square foot) and have doubled its value in under 105 days...from $465,000 to $1,000,000.....in under 4 months...in a "seller's market"....The point here is that every facility will have its own "market" and savvy investors can make money throughout the market's cycle.

Second, all of those seem normal wear and tear to me.

It probably will continue to be fine until some enterprising tenant tells the utility that they are moving and then doesn't, and uses the utility on my dime.

We do not want to get back into debt after that so we are talking about working in cash. 

We are selling our primary residence and purchasing a new primary residence. 

Even though there are varying opinions as to where we are in the cycle, i think its hard to deny that were late in the cycle.I have a good amount of cash sitting in the bank after recently selling one of my properties.

In particular in the mid segement - we are seeing more new construction as of lateley, inclusing my own business - and all of them are in the 450 to 650k range.

We are new to LA as well and we really want to house hack with a duplex/triplex but in LA that's quite hard to find in the $5-600K mark.