You will find it difficult to obtain financing and won't get into a primary residence with little money down if you go the route of an LLC. 

Investing out of state can be difficult, however if you can utilize all of your current knowledge and now just partner with a talented, sophisticated, strong track record Turnkey provider, this will be a breeze and in-fact may turn into a new lifestyle for you. 

In that scenario, it would be difficult for the buyer to walk away with any cash, unless you offer him some of the profit from the eventual sale/flip.Keep us updated on progress!  

Since you have experience, it shouldn't be too difficult for you to get one of them to finance a good deal for you. 

Financed SFRs are notoriously difficult to cash flow right off the bat in many markets.

 :) Great idea, but difficult to execute.  

A value add opportunity here in NYC could be perfect for but it would require cash out and time to do the upgrades, which seems difficult to impossible with a 1031.

She was awesome and my file was difficult (you know how it goes when you are 28 and have 6 properties in your name and low assets bc their your house LOL)

I'm mostly interested in the buy and hold strategies but understand that is difficult to make the numbers work in San Diego or southern California.

Your explanation of events is long and a bit difficult to read (you may want to shorten to encourage more responses), but I would try to go over this person's head/chain of command and complain that they did not explain that the $100 was non refunadable.