I'm planning on doing local-only development, ie all services and resources are local and no remote servers. I'll be using Subversion for source control. Are there any benefits to doing a local install of the SVN server versus referencing the same local repository via a file-based approach (file://...)?
(Windows system)
Well, one would be flexibility. Say you have a laptop you just want to quickly check your code out to, it will be all ready to go.
But really, given that you are already using SVN, but with the file repository access, there isn't really much difference. Setting up the network access at a later date won't take long...
Local access will be faster. Depending on your network server, remote access will (hopefully) be more available and be backed up regularly.
I 2nd the answer about backups. I've started using SVN locally for just hobby projects, and it's definitely a plus to have versioning in case there's something I want to revert to. It's still a better idea to have a repository located on another machine, however, since you'll have two copies on different machines.
In truth, this is what makes git superior to SVN. You don't just have a master branch on another server (like github), but your local clone is a complete versioned repository, so really you have a full local versioned backup on the server, as well as your local controlled version. a++
The SVN book recommends avoiding the file:// protocol.
It removes any layers of protection between the users and the repository: users can accidentally (or intentionally) corrupt the repository database, it becomes hard to take the repository offline for inspection or upgrade, and it can lead to a mess of file permission problems.
Probably only the latter applies to you.
See also this Stack Overflow question.