You are clearly on the right track! 

His unit door is off its track.  

Looks like I was on the right track...And according to that last paragraph, it appears that the only gain that is NOT excluded is the gain equal to the depreciation claimed while renting the house, which, in my case was ~2 years. 

I didn’t like the expense involved when I researched cost of maintaining a business account to self manage 1 rental and found that the LLC route wasn’t necessary if we maintained an umbrella policy, so I just keep track of rental income and expenses (not that hard) on the one I self manage and any extra expenses on the ones managed by property management to add to their annual summary for my accountant.

You can start tracking some of those today on google finance.6. 

There is no long period in CA coastal markets without appreciation going back to the start of tracking this data.For appreciation it is important to realize there is a big difference between initial cash flow and long term cash flow.  

You may want a separate spreadsheet for personal tracking, but that depends on what you are trying to accomplish. 

I think you're on the right track.

Not sure why or how I lost track of BP the last couple of years. 

Are they typically willing to partner with new brokers, or do they require track record, etc.