I have a typical part time job, but was looking for either a job or to work for free somewhere that I will learn about the real estate market. 

Must have been nice :P To qualify for the status there are two tests: 1. spend 750 hours in a real property trade or business, AND spend more then half your working time in it.

My regular job provides good cash flow and allows me to save up about $5-10k/mo after maxing out 401k.

The reason we bought the property is that there is an 8-acre clearing at the peak of one hill which is where we planned to build the future homesite as it has an amazing view and a nice, mostly flat area (see second picture for a bit of the view).

If you arnt and your going to live there long term then again.. your other side is paying a very nice chunk of the overall interest.

Is it possible to increase your income with your current full time job to get the down payment yourself quicker? 

Nice find @Luke Trovinger Thank you!

SSM could be promising in the long run and despite its not so nice history, the future seems bright! 

Sure if you plug vacasa into it they will do worse than what you can do because they don't give a flip but if you find a good local manager (I use Hyatus Stays) you can find they will do much better than what you can do because it's their full time focus and job.

The last few scammers I dealt with had looked at public records themselves also and had done a pretty thorough job assuming the identity of the real owner, so just making sure the names match public records isn’t enough anymore.