I have moved funds earmarked for REI into dividend paying stocks. 

If you're going to work with a turn key company, communicate fully with them so that they can work within your 1031 deadlines and possibly earmark properties for you.

Anything above that was earmarked for the next down payment.

But with more consumers shifting their shopping from brick-and-mortar to online stores, and many workers now telecommuting, the city plans to earmark more buildings for residential conversions.

I admire your success and have many, MANY posts about vetting tenants earmarked.

I can put away typically $1000/month +/- occasional overtime cash ear marked for investing (after other retirement funds have already been accounted for) starting January.

I would take $150K and put it into a Margin Account with a Stock Brokerage, earmark $150K for real estate investments and put the remaining $100K into savings.Because both the stock and real estate funds can be margined, you would have buying power of about $300K in the stock market, and $600K in real estate.

(Hopefully you didn't earmark it for a specific purpose and do have it set up as a general security deposit that can be used for rent, fees, damages, missing items, extra cleaning.)

I wish instead there was a way to just total up the profits for all sold flips at the end of the year, earmark a 40-50% portion as "salary", pay it and the higher PR taxes on it right then, take the rest as distribution, report it on tax forms accordingly, and call it good.

The monthly income you have coming in probably won't help you get approved for a property in OC, but if your starting capital is earmarked for investment purposes, you do have enough to purchase one to two properties in other markets where it makes a lot more financial sense.This is not uncommon.