Ranking local sites

just curious what others have had success with to rank local sites lately, particularly for clients where having the conversation of 'yeah, we're going to have to move domains and start over' isn't really an option

would also like details like if you use PBNs for instance, do you buy links, run your own PBN or?

First you need to find the best long tail keyword for your local search.

after you can get the good ranking.

Why would you need to move domains though? Was the domain penalized/trashed?

You can check out these subsections on BHW for help by the way:

ORM
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/f224-online-reputation-management-orm/

Local SEO
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/f209-local-seo/

You can also find the user "BHopkins" I believe his name was that's a ORM mod in training or something like that, and add him for help if you have any serious/legitimate questions. He has a lot of useful threads/comments around BHW somewhere (I'm too lazy to find them, but you can search bar it) that can point you in the general direction too.