Leads are not going to fall out of the sky either, so your number one focus will always be lead generation if you plan to make any kind of money.There are enough books and podcasts out there to learn the industry without being an agent and it is much more time and cost-effective than being an agent.

Wanted to make sure that would be a good strategy for this kind of business  as well.

Even if you form your entity out of state, you will pay CA taxes if you are managing from CA, which equates to "doing business" in CA.Depending on what kinds of activities you envision doing with your group, you should speak with an attorney for the right type of entity. 

You kind of answered your own question.

Miscommunication is very common when you're dealing with this many people and things change up all the time.

If you want to do it right (which you should do in this case), you'd have to put in a new common-area meter that both owners would be responsible for splitting. 

Cities/utility companies rarely are going to want to do some kind of pro-rated payment plan.

@Nancy RothWow, what a tragic situation.You get to see all kinds of misery when you are a landlord.

They talk with successful investors of all kinds - buy and hold rentals, commercial, flippers, wholesalers - you'll get a great overview of the options across the REI landscape. 

Not to say it's common, they found embezzlements, one guy and his partner had a bookkeeper embezzle over $100,000 over a 2 year period.