we pay a LOT of money for legal advice, legal document preparation, etc., the result is that we aren’t challenged when we need to take ownership if the borrower can’t perform.    

He can spend the next few years-ish getting a finance degree through an online school while working part time, but he just got offered a full time position helping with sales for a local wholesale real estate company. 

You can review your HOA's governing documents, also known as the CC&Rs, to understand the proper procedures.

What documents do they require, what credit scores do they allow, how do they verify previous rental history, etc.?

LLC is pass through income so have your bookeeper or CPA take care of everything at the end of the year for your tax documents.

Appreciate your thoughts on this   As an LOA, you'll be basically be doing all of the legwork of a file - entering all of the data into whatever LOS is being used, processing the loan, preliminary credit analysis, reviewing all of the documents for completeness and accuracy, communicating with borrowers, etc.

Build your network by joining local real estate investor meetups or online communities like BiggerPockets.

Does anyone do an online application?

Look through your documents.

I too, have looked seriously into the many, many, online Real Estate Guru’s that are offering one on one training.