My son is looking to move to San Diego with the Navy as an E5. 

I am a retired Navy Submariner, current REI and now work in turnkey.

Consider adding gutters and extensions versus french drain.

Scottish, French, German, Polish).

One of my places had a little extra room next to the kitchen so we made a dedicated coffee area with a coffeepot, a drip setup, a french press and a pod machine.

I had a lot of rain water drainage issues in the past for which I built a french drain /trench drain on the side and back which stopped those drainage water issues flooding my backyard and crawlspace areas(at one point lot of drainage street rain water used to sit many days in crawlspace which used to be pumped out by handyman).

(Which is why "mesne" often has the French pronunciation "main.") 

@Jermaine Wesley thanks for sharing, as a retired Navy veteran I am stoked to see that you Mr deployment savings were supercharged by this project!

One is focused on real estate and its all military folks and vets (I'm active duty Navy) and the other one is focused on being well rounded, while also building wealth and passive income.

I have seen all sides of this equation, self managing my own properties locally, but moved with the Navy 1000 miles away and managed the same rentals from afar, and had friends here in Memphis that had 18 properties and had them all with PMs with varying levels of success, some bad and some great.Self-managing brings about an additional level of responsibility that most of the time is fine, but that is not what you hire a PM for.