And being in a FHA loan I would not be able to rent out the property unless I have good reasoning like : growing family, moving out of town, deployment and I am not under any of that. 

Selling gives you cash now, which can be deployed into different uses and may be ideal. 

Ok, here you go.If you deploy STR tax strategy to write off your W-2 income tax, what happens for tax if you were to use the property for long term rental, sell it, etc?

Private Money can come from anywhere but outside of friends and family, I've had luck at IRA Events - plenty of people with capital to deploy there.You could try some creative financing techniques with little to no money down.

Unfortunately I'm deployed right now for another 7 months so I won't be back to that region until May time-frame..

Just to clarify, dont mean to deploy solo 401k funds. 

I was introduced to bigger pockets by a friend this past December right before a 6 month deployment.

My friend and I will have some time once we get back from our deployment, and we would like to flip a house in the city of Los Angeles.

Hi All,I am a new investor and have some money saved up that I like to deploy in real estate.

Having said that, it still might be a good idea to spend a few minutes and some money with a CPA and/or attorney setting things up and identifying the tax effects of your exit strategies to try to keep capital deployed before handing it over to the government.Yes, I'm an accountant, but I'm not YOUR accountant.