Just paint it back before you leave...

My first main "question/concern" would be does the conservative figure justify the risk.

Our main concern now is the time it takes to clean and store linens as we still do this work ourselves. 

I recently paid off 60% of my car (I didn't want to pay off the whole thing because I felt it would harm my credit.) leaving me with a principal amount of around 4k.

@Jason ColemanOne concern is if you aren't using it as your primary residence, you aren't abiding to FHA guidelines. 

If you leave them plenty of room for their profit it's no big deal.The factors to consider can be the amount of profit that's in deal. 

The plan with the commercial loan is to finance 80% of the first two properties based on appraised value(270k with 80% being 214k) which would pay the note on their original loans(182k) and leave 32k to use. 

I think that leaves you looking at long-distance investing, which is completely doable. 

I don’t want to leave nyc, but really want to do my first deal before the end of the year.

If that doesn't concern you then you can do a general partnership and save the $800 minimum tax in California.