Local dealerships can be sold and dealerships can go out of business, so I think it's a mistake to count on them long-term. Buying from a local dealership is useful if they throw in lots of classes that help you get started with a machine.
What you might want to do is join longarming groups on Yahoo to get a variety of opinions. The homequiltingsystems group is composed of longarmers with all different kinds of setups. This way you can get information from actual users.
Many longarmers live far from servicing agents. Some companies are better at customer support than others. Innova users on the Yahoo groups mention frequently their appreciation of the 24/7/365 telephone support available to them, and Innova machines have a reputation of being easy to service at home by users. Some other companies have a similar reputation of great telephone support. Assuming you keep the box and cushioning components for your machine (a very good thing to do!), you can even send your machine back to the factory periodically for servicing. I have seen a number of posts by longarmers who do that.
Given the above, you may want to look at brands other than HQ and BabyLock.