I am a small fish in my local pond yet I am approached weekly, often daily, via calls, texts, and emails from people who "live in an expensive market and have identified ______ as an ideal Long Distance investment location and will be buying ____(insert audacious number of homes here_____ in the next year." 

it's not ideal and a pretty ****** situation. with that said it was my very first property,  I sucked it up  and did what I had too.   

Ideally you want to keep your capital as simple as possible. 100% financing for this would be the simplest and easiest.

She is able to make her own schedule so it was ideal for me to have the same options available.

I would expect others to follow suit. 

Ideally I would prefer to leverage OPM/HM.

My aim is to make the rent cover all his expenses, put money aside for any issues that come up, and ideally pocket a couple hundred each month.Any advice is much appreciated--thanks all!

However, conventional is ideal.

Spend some time researching what would suit you best and what aligns well with your end goals, and get involved with RE groups to gain insight from other agents/brokers.

@Lon Coleman I know the exchange needs to follow suite with the same name (LLC to LLC, etc).