These are features like online renter payments, tenant portal (for payments and work orders), help keeping track of work orders, tax reporting features, and accounting functionality.

I’m ideally looking to buy that first property in San Diego.Thanks

Investing locally would be ideal for sure.  

In the meantime I would love to have some helpful information or ideas to share with the buyers when we meet and ideally an agreement/contract we could fill out together once new terms are agreed to and then share that with the attorney so he could draft up the formal instrument for recording.If you have experience with this type of scenario, I’d love to hear any recommendations you have or any helpful resources you could point me to for the appropriate paperwork.Under foreclosure laws, you have to send appropriate notices and try to work with the borrower and offer a loan mod before foreclosure anyway. 

Fix it.We eliminate as much landscaping as possible: we take out flower beds and most decorative features, ideally, lawn mowing is the only job tenants have to do, because we know that's all we can expect from most.

The city wants to tear the property and surrounding properties down Zillow said it’s worth 38000The city offer me 13000.I could use some adviceHard to give advice with limited information, but as a general rule, the longer you wait and the further down the line their project is the more valuable your property will be to them.Zillow (and all automatic online) estimates are very unreliable, so don't base on that.

Any help is much appreciated - obviously a short term rental would be ideal, but it looks like thats out the question for now. 

There are a lot of websites that offer the course online, or if you have a college near you, they also typically offer a class that satisfies the pre-licensing requirement.

We live in California at the moment and I have W2 job and my wife a small online business.

I suggest focusing on building your "Core 4" team—agent, lender (one who can finance both the purchase/rehab and refinance is ideal), contractor, and property manager.