I would like to be heavily involved, mainly so that I can learn the business and gain experience. 

Where PCS season is most heavily felt is in rentals.  

If your looking toanage it yourself it is a lot different and more worm than a typical investment property.Also since they rely strongly on reputation and word of mouth, they had to be heavily involved as the help/workers typically are not paid well and need to be trained to build your brand

These are tricky and heavily scrutinized for fraud/conflict-of-interest.If you intention is to truly occupy the property as your primary residence, and can provide a satisfactory evidence/story to convince the underwriter then most likely you should be OK.

@Katey Tata this is a heavily discussed topic on BP - You might want to search at the top right for "wholesale" and "illegal" here are just a few of the threads that come uphttp://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/93/topics/2168...http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/93/topics/1338...http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/93/topics/1653...

I agreed to lock-in the price and sign the contract now because it's bird-in-hand.While the buyer is renting my house which they will be buying, they are finding things wrong with it -- carpet is heavily stained and worn (it is, my last tenants were awful), there's dings in the drywall (again, bad previous tenants), the mirrors and light fixtures are rusting (Hawaii is humid, things rust fast), and there's bugs, possibly termites.What, if any of this, am I responsible for?

In fact, land may actually drop in value before increasing.I would heavily not recommend you buying spec land unless you have lots of experience on where the market is going  or are buying for a very long term hold ( greater than 10 years).

I once went to the heavily barricaded (Clearly post-Terminator I https://youtu.be/kYt2HmAxHL4 ) police department for a property I was doing due diligence on and they were happy to tell me that the subject property 'only' averaged 20 calls a month!

I feel like if you don't over-leverage yourself in buying the properties, live frugally, save heavily, and always expect/prepare for the market drops then changes in the market will not stress you out that much. 

If you are looking to beat the sellers up on price use contractors that advertise heavily in the area for your prices.