With the budget mentioned, you can find single family rentals in Columbus and duplexes in Cleveland under 200k.

Not to mention, these agents provide incredible valuable by providing me real time market intel on buyers tendencies, want's and needs which is important, especially when you are developing for-sale housing.

You mentioned that if I create an LLC in AL, I don't need to create a foreign LLC in CA.

@Bill Brandt funny you should mention Guam and the USVI :).

I seem to recall a prior post where you mentioned Grand as your southern border, so what's your western border?

As @Peter Tverdov mentioned, you'll usually see that tenants don't replace these things.

Manteca, Fresno and Turlock were mentioned to me. 

You didn't do yourself any favors when you mentioned that the new car has all the bells and whistles but do whatever you feel is best as this is a personal decision. 

Nearly everything you mentioned here clearly and emphatically says you have tons of homework to do.

However, this introduces a level of risk to the equation because now, as has been mentioned, instead of going to $0, you could end up negative big time!