Just the cost of doing business in an up and coming niche.I’ve considered building a reference tool for my local area, but my primary county has 56 different municipalities each with different rules, we cover 6 counties, and Ohio has 88 counties.

So you are limiting the total risks to one box at a time.Insurances, asset striping and entities are all complementary but not similar asset protection tools. 

BP has various tools available to help you analyze your deals (rental, flips, wholesale, etc.), feel free to use them: https://www.biggerpockets.com/investment-calculators 7.

LVT all throughout rentals is very popular in the lower 48. 

Like I mentioned it isn’t tool heavy and this is one of the easier things for you to do.

If I want to scale my portfolio, traditional 20% down mortgages aren't going to be possible because of the property value here, so wanted to see what other popular methods are possible.2) How can a rookie investor get comfortable with buying out-of-state? 

You won't come close to that closer in or in a more popular area.

I just need to better understand the tools that I have.Thank you.

The area is very popular.

You can certainly use gifting tools to consolidate the properties after the fact.