Couple things;1) 50% expense rule typically includes all expenses including vacancy.

I’ve spent the last couple of months soaking in as much as I can from the forums and the podcasts.

I have a couple of investors who only look for opportunities in this area because they have a contractor who owns property himself in this area.

From what I know a couple of months back MI supposedly broke up with Oceanpointe and formed their own management company which was Blue Sky.

I've been a reader for a couple of weeks now after having found the Bigger Pockets YouTube channel a while back and from listening to the bigger pockets podcast and I have to say that I'm extremely impressed and proud that such a great real estate investing community exists! 

Couple of thoughts: Looks like you are using hard money for 18 months?

Do a quick forum search on something you want to learn more about, take a couple hours or days to do research, and then share what you've learned with others that have questions about the same thing. 

If not, you likely won't be using much water while rehabbing or renovating (couple hundred max for a few months??). 

I'm a licensed life agent myself in CA (OK68442), and have a couple clients that do fund their RE purchases with life insurance loans and its a fantastic product for that. 

As I was doing my research there were couple articles as well as posts where it stated that buying a foreclose property for novice is not a good choice since there are many situations such as liens can make your deal go south.