However, I live close-by (30 minute drive), recently retired from my day-job, and if the loan is not too large, I might be willing to do a deal just to learn a bit more about another side of RE.  

The job market is tight here in Lake County right now.

Your job will be to find an investor-friendly brokerage willing to teach.

There are occasionally opportunities for grandfathering if there is evidence of legally established conversions that were done previously, but no permit records exist to show it was done. 

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

I'm curious how you would handle managing when working a full-time job in the military.

I'm not sure if we can like to articles on our own websites here, so to be safe I'll just suggest the IRS web page, which does do a pretty good job of explaining the basics: https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc510The main thing to know if you're going to claim business miles is that you do need to keep a log of every business trip. 

Job and Talent Loss : The duration of recovery has and will continue to force migration.

And I occasionally get one tenant complaining about their neighbor.

Also, focus on 2 years of job/income stability.Class D Properties:Cashflow vs Appreciation: Typically, all cashflow with little, maybe even negative, relative rent & value appreciationVacancy Est: 20%+ should be used to cover nonpayment, evictions & damages.Tenant Pool: majority will have FICO scores under 560 (almost 30% probability of default), little to no good tradelines, lots of collections & chargeoffs, recent evictions.