So anyone who advertises or uses ANY marketing technique, can really advance businesses here. 

I’ve worked with ALE before and actually market my inventory to them directly via different marketing techniques.

You'll have a property manager do the management (so you being close to it is not needed).Yes there are risks for some people to go out of state but if you learn the techniques like I have, you'll see it's actually easier and far less risky.

Good HML's in ground up or rehab will provide a very easy/handy way to request and distribute draws using something like Built, which we use and it gives our borrowers and our team a single source of truth for all things draw-related. 

Yes we were successful winning bidding wars 3 months ago using the family postcard technique;) Basically, we added a cute picture of our family along with our offers (which were based on conventional financing) and our “humanity” made us win over the cash offers.

You take your share of distributions if/when there is money to share.And then I go back to the person with money.

Whether you should take a retirement distribution or not depends on several factors1) How much do you value the freedom/flexibility to ues the money NOW compared to when you are 60 years old.2) What type of return can you get having cash vs investing in an IRA / SDIRA.If you can make a 1% - 2% better annual return in your personal name, it may make sense as the added return will pay for the penalties over a couple of years.I personally cashed out of my retirement account back in 2016 and it was the best decision I made.

If i lived in San Jose, the first RE investment that i would consider is a local property with an ADU that had distribution on the lot that would allow a profitable lot split.   

Try some broken record techniques repeating, rephrasing, etc. 

We have used that technique in the past and have had a lot of luck with it.