its not legal or proper to give out the names of phone numbers of your borrowers..

Presumably you can also protect against this with the aforementioned neighborhood growth trends.A lot of money has been spent and lost trying to use the best information out there to determine local buying decisions at the property level.

Does not have to be local, since these are mostly general issues, not State (I've used advisors in other states but for other issues). 

My local loan officer said I would be able to get a loan up to $450k, if I rent my current home out and the property, I’m going for is a duplex+.

The other areas give a little more privacy protections but for local investments, that won't be a huge benefit. 

, what made you feel secure taking the leap with hard money and going after that first flip.Partnering with an investor or doing seller financing would be ideal, but I'm still growing my network by cold calling other investors and real estate agents and attending local events.

I would not venture beyond your skill set and suggest you risk harming yourself, such as getting electrocuted, however, once you have completed your work, have it inspected with the local building inspector.

We have tried reaching out to numbers of local CPAs in the Sacramento area to have them help crunch the numbers and haven't had any luck at all.

If that's the case, the easy answer for "next time" is make sure you have a LL account with your utility provider, which will turn the power over into your name if the tenant disconnects from their name. 

In other areas it could be other chains like groceries or local chains.