As a self-employed 1099 individual, your best route is most likely DSCR.

I am drawn to multi family homes and think I would like to start close to home here in the Twin Cities, but the more I listen and read, the less opposed I am to looking out of state. 

I am also reading the section 1231 regarding net operating loss (NOL) and wonder if the leftover could be carried back on the last 2 years of tax return?

I recommend learning a bit on how to read the financials, but find yourself a great Accountant to help you analyze the financials and tax returns to make sure things make sense and are proper. 

We don’t know any PMCs to recommend in the area mentioned, but since selecting the wrong PMC is usually more harmful than selecting a bad tenant, you might want to read our series about “How to Screen a PMC Better than a Tenant”:https://www.biggerpockets.com/member-blogs/3094/91877-how-to-screen-a-pmc-better-than-a-tenant-part-1-services-and-processesWe recommend you get management contracts from several PMCs and compare the services they cover and, more importantly, what they each DO NOT cover.

It's the most obvious read out there when you see it.

Generally your hours working at BP as a W-2 employee would not be part of RE professional hours unfortunately.For those who are RE professionals, gain on sale of rental real estate is still capital gains and still avoids self employment taxes just the same for those tho are not REPS so there is no downside to being a REP in the example you provided Scott. 

I read Chad Carson's Small and Mighty Real Estate Investing and I think my path is most aligned with what he calls the "live and fix" method.

Are employers moving in, is the population growing, is the average household income high, does it have good market fundamentals?

You will need to read them and do some math, but this would allow you to calculate costs and evenly allocate them if they go 50/50.