Attend a Meetup in your area or meet someone local and grab a coffee or a beer.5.

Lots of great locals/agents here that can give you Cali specific info. 

3) Check out some of the local meetups that you can find in this forum!

This is evidenced by significant and sustained population growth.

I recommend spending a couple nights in the unit so you have the perspective of a guest to notice anything you are missing or need and develop a check list for your cleaners and/or property manager.Your agent should be advising you on all of this and more and have local contacts for you. 

You should check out CFRI, the local chapter of the National REIA.

With local home and land prices so expensive, I'd like to explore building a Tri or FourPlex on the back half of the lot. 

I'll usually go there first to get a baseline and then further refine that with local listings, etc.. 

We went around and spoke with about 5 local builders and visited their sites, did walk throughs, etc...

To your question Why in the area, with no experience in it I thought starting local would make sense.