.**  My understanding through the professionals I have engaged, is that since i was 1) not a named beneficiary on the account, but received the account through the estate, and 2) have to take the distribution of the entire balance by the end of this year (5 years since my mother's passing) I have no ability to roll the account into another tax sheltered IRA, self directed or otherwise.

could not agree more.. friend of mine bought 4  of these 4 plex's and its been a super challenge .. he also bought half a dozen SFRs all of these about 5 years ago.. the SFRs have been great gone up a bunch and he is taking profit now.4 plexs constant management issues and simply have not performed..

This looks like a small challenge both from a numbers standpoint and a PM standpoint. 

That's your challenge.

It varies quite a bit from house to house, and employment can be a challenge. 

You should always be looking for advice and guidance from other people that challenge your position.

Your discussion regarding get engaged is frivolous and irrelevant in regards to where you choose to live.

The pricing might be different if you brought the deal vs the investor located it, forwarded a wholesale deal along or spent the time to review the comps and value, then relayed that information.I think it would be challenging to get investor clients right now, because so many people are "looking" to be in real estate rather than actually doing deals.

Indeed, just getting good people to show up can be a challenge. 

What are potential challenges one might face being an out of state investor and from self managing one door in state to hiring a PM to manage multi?