As a custodian, they are prohibited by rule from providing any tax, legal or investment advice.An alternate format that is probably more efficient for the goals you stated is a plan offering checkbook control.  

Can you think of any alternatives?

Another alternative is leasing with a right of first refusal, which avoids most of the Safe Act and Dodd-Frank issues.

An alternative to being licensed in California is to be licensed in an alternative market.

It's not what I would prefer, but sometimes it is the alternative that gets you paid.

Cozy sounds like a much better alternative.

Another alternative is to take the estimated time for the contract and then just add 25-50% for a buffer in your pro forma spreadsheets.  

If the owner does not have an agreement with a broker (which he/she doesn't if he/she is doing FSBO) then you'll end up having to pay some sort of commission to the agent to compensate him/her for the time (the cost would be negotiable with whatever agent you choose, but it would be an agreement between you and the agent, the owner would not be involved in that).Alternatively, you can just pay a lawyer to write the contract and close for you, which you would most likely have to do anyway.

Once I buy enough properties to liquidate the cash I will need alternative ways to produce money to buy more properties.  

I used to manage a 200-men crew operations, a crushing plant and 50ish truck/equipment fleet management for a family owned business, it was all self-performed and no subs are hired, anyway, I will keep things on the construction side.