Thanks in advance to anyone tackling this.

Find out what niche you want to tackle.... wholesaling (I HATE WHOLESALING, but sadly...

I am currently in the research/educating myself phase and am also working toward getting my real estate license before tackling my first project.

Subdividing is an obstacle, but if you tackle it and know what you're doing, there's a lot of opportunity. 

Determine if you want to tackle those problems, and if so, take that off of the offer purchase price.- Find the comp rates of similar properties in the area.- Run the numbers: current rent, current taxes / utilities / expenses / etc.

Your comment about long-distance investing is a good one and actually brings light to the fact that any type of investing is going to have its own set of obstacles, it's just a matter of which ones you want to tackle. 

What type of REI do you want to tackle first?

It's not the first time I hear someone express an interest in "joining forces" to tackle mobile home investing.

Any sort of help with a general approach to tackling this would be great! 

Welcome Steve, sounds like you have a lot going on which makes it difficult to tackle a response to.