You must hire locals who are familiar and acclimated to the culture of the city you plan to create rentals in. 

One thing I'll add to an off-market deal is you might find a seller willing to do seller financing.You said, "I don't think the time exchanged to manage SFH would be worth my time and the cash flow most likely wouldn't be reasonable enough to hire a property manager.

Most of the tax experts who specialize in real estate work completely virtually these days.That said, a local CPA probably does have an edge if your state has state income tax and especially if your city has a local tax on top of it.

What I think is virtually certain, property insurance in California is going to go up substantially over the next few years.  

I could easily train virtual assistants to handle these payments and have an app created for encrypting sensitive data for facilitating the transactions through financial service partners from my main line of business.

Facts will also change, I'll edit as appropriate.So.Quest Trust aka Quest IRA sold to Millenium Trust (now Inspira, ugh, did the Bud Light marketing lady get hired there?

Quote from @Kody Smith: without getting too deep into my finances, what my strategy is...1. take loans to buy properties (leverage)2. fix/flip for day to day cash flow income3. use some of the fix/flip income to buy consistent cash flow through:- business acquisition, - commercial properties (MF and store fronts),I have no intention of doing ALL of the management myself, I will hire management as needed (medium term goal)my expected core role is money provider, evaluating the numbers, making decisions, and connecting with investors, wholesalers, lenders, contractors, and property owners.while I am just on step 2 of the journey, I am looking toward step 3 to stabilize, and not worry about if house prices drop mid project or not (or not worry as much) So to be fair this is more about obtaining and growing a real estate business not simply buying rentals for cashflow.

As part of his investment of capital into scaling, he hired a marketing firm specializing in SEO, SEM, social media, direct email, etc.  

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Marcus & Millichap’s report also mentions the importance of universities to Pittsburgh’s rental market, “The considerable number of universities in Pittsburgh will provide a diverse hiring pool for the area’s growing tech sector in 2017 and beyond.