If you're a contractor a fixer might be better, if you're a marketer maybe an STR and so on.  

I’m a licensed real estate agent in North Carolina as well as a contractor here in the triangle.

This means that you will probably need to pay registration and filing fees in at least 2 states if you don’t buy CA property as a CA resident.Any lawsuits should be limited to the assets of the LLC and not your personal assets (assuming you run the LLC appropriately and the corporate veil is not pierced, some debate as to SMLLC).

Not everyone is a professional investor or contractor background.

I don't think you even need to be a general contractor or subcontractor to set up an account there.They have a cool warehouse Northwest of Chicago.Otherwise, Home Depot's Lifeproof floor is pretty nice too, but not sure how it compares in pricing to what you saw.

Was it a licensed contractor?  

Honestly there are several career paths that will help (Renovation contractor, real estate agent, corporate RE analyst)  but depending upon whether you are looking for a career investing/flipping versus using your W-2 career income to build more by flipping, you can approach it better in my opinion by learning through doing.Flipping especially 1 at a time isn't a full time job and my thought is that you get help on your first, maybe first few flips. 

Be sure to look up proper contractors in your journey.

Move in and move out walkthroughs, Hoa violations, etc etc at no extra charge  They have connections with contractors that will show up within an hour any day of the week, charge a reasonable rate and have it fixed within a couple hours.

Loophole - A way of avoiding or escaping a cost or legal burden that would otherwise apply by means of an omission or ambiguity in the wording of a contract or law.The law here isn't a loophole.