All this frequent moving has created great opportunities to buy and hold real estate at each location we are stationed.

If your dead set on buy-n-hold SFR, you can drive a couple of hours to the central valley or the high desert, but that would require you to frequent those places (but who want to do that... no offense to anyone living in those areas :o )Here is an LA times article about Airbnb (a vacation rental platform).

I've seen some promising properties but have yet to be able to purchase one for a variety of reasons. 

Things change frequently, and some banks have more strict standards layered on top of conventional guidelines.

a.http://www.irs.gov/Help-&-Resources/Tools-&-FAQs/FAQs-for-Individuals/Frequently-Asked-Tax-Questions-&-Answers/Sale-or-Trade-of-Business,-Depreciation,-Rentals/Depreciation-&-Recapture/Depreciation-&-Recapture-4And if it is, does the fact that this was required before I could rent change how I need to capitalize/expense it?

In a custodian held account, that can be an issue, but within an IRA LLC you can open a stock trading account or keep idle cash deployed in a variety of ways beyond sitting in cash in a checking account.  

However, I've been frequently outbid, and I also don't have the funds to spend on doing title searches, especially when the likelihood is I will get outbid.

Also know that all title companies have attorneys either on staff or frequently the owner of the company.  

I have always had this idea that I would spend my summers flipping houses to supplement my school year income, but the more I read and learned about REI, the more excited I became about the variety of possibilities.

Also, I would suggest visiting a variety of leading CFRE sites and doing due diligence: read the FAQs, sign up, view the investments being offered, call the companies and speak to their team.