I'd like to be able to meet my borrower's needs by using OPM to fund the loans.

Ensure you have a thorough understanding of legalities, market dynamics, and risk management before fully committing, specially in hard money lending.

Happy to meet up for coffee sometime if you want to chat about investments.

I think it would be a great way to network, get outside and meet new people. 

Secondly, create a checklist focusing on market analysis, property condition assessments, and legalities specific to each state.

I am on the board of CFRI, the local chapter of the National REIA, you should come out to some of the many meet ups we have to network with both investors, trades and agents.Would be happy to connect sometime, Best of luck to you!

Flipping them - I haven't meet my obligation from the 1031 exchange to keep them for 2 years. 

I didn’t state on the application that you can not have an eviction or crimes on your record to qualify so can I legally use that as my reasoning?

But if you do go local where you live I recommend you attend local REI meetings.

The best way to explaining this is for you to download an IRR calculator spreadsheet or build your own simple one and play around with one.For what its worth most deals I deem meeting minimal IRR standards is 13-15% but you have to dig a little deeper to uncover the real placements of cashflows and capitalization events... and then dig even deeper to verify the assumptions such as occupancy, rent increases per year, and what reversion cap rate was used.Again I don't look for IRR cause its manipulated a lot instead I look at total return on a 5 year basis.