I paid $1725 last year for both properties to have unlimited snow removal and salting, with a 2 inch snowfall as the trigger.  

@Jason Morton, take all rules with a grain of salt.

The more salt we use the more it costs .  

But I see you're a family man, and I'm not sure what you do for work, so obviously you may be constrained in what part of SoCal you're looking in.Again, take this all with a grain of salt, but I think my personal strategy right now is to wait until the market cools again to pick up more buy-and-holds in SoCal or maybe if I'm lucky find a distressed property.  

I have never rented to the government so take this with a grain of salt.

I have over 30 years of experience in the mortgage & construction fields, and am presently working for a national reference laboratory as an executive assistant in Salt Lake City,Utah. 

Even if you did it yourself with your own groundskeeper, which at 74k a year, absolutely he better be, your salt costs alone will easily be in the several thousand dollars, as well as I noticed there wasnt a landscaping cost present either, which is also a lie.

True, the REI content was salted with sales pitch and conditioning every step of the way, however an intelligent person ought see through that and be able to separate the REI content from pitch.

I am needing to find a contractor  in the Salt Lake area, who can help me by getting me good estimates of rehabbing costs.

@Mark Sossoman, most attorneys won't even touch any type of deal without a retainer of some sort usually between 5 & 10k if they're worth their salt.