Long term play, this is likely your best bet.

My constraints are that I am only 24 and do not have any previous lending history nearly to this capacity, as well as having limited knowledge on how to structure these deals with subdivisions.

Coming out of the city council meeting I determined to sell everything within the city limits as soon as it was expedient to.

One of you should be the owner, hold title to the property, the other can be a limited partner.

My father would be willing to help us out in basically any way that he could, in exchange for modest monthly payments going forward, and is content limiting his capital gains exposure with the owner financing. 

I would bet the most of us self manage.

I would say your best bet is to see if you can purchase a home with an assumable mortgage. 

But California also has pretty onerous land-use regulations that limit supply, and there’s been a lot less financial distress than people were expecting, with one of the lowest loan-to-value ratios on outstanding mortgages in the country.

I really see Columbus Ohio as an extremely safe bet for the next 10-20 years.

If done the other way around, the terms of your preapproval will change.With residential financing, you cannot purchase directly into a LLC (unless you look at DSCR) but that still would limit you to the 5% down conventional.