My husband finally convinced me that we can learn as we go so though we have huge goals and I’d love everything set up for smooth sailing, we are diving in and under contract on our first out of state property.

Lower $ rentals, some sort of hard/smooth surface. 

Overall this was a pretty smooth flip for us - we've built an incredible and deep network of contractors so everything went according to schedule and on budget.

I agreed (though with some hesitation)--and the closing went smoothly.

No matter how you try and wrap your mind around it, if you're not going to be there, you're biggest risk will be trusting the other person on the ground, presumably your contractor, to ensure everything goes smoothly on time and on budget.

The GC needs to be there to ensure everything goes smoothly.

So at this time I would lean towards the conventional loan and save the entitlement for a future purchase if you want this to go smooth.

My plan is to focus more on "B" level properties with cash flow and use the concept of dollar cost averaging to smooth things out over the long term.  

His smooth talking got you on the hook, and now that he put you in one hell of a mess, without good options, he's positioning himself as your Savior with his smooth tongue to finish what he started.

I have 9 months to get everything running smoothly and efficiently so I can take off Q4 2015 to travel