Given that you are living there as your primary residence, you will have far fewer barriers to renting STR, even in the strictly regulated California market. 

We are in a dangerous market, Kevin...

You may be able to establish a private roadway with fewer restrictions with the easement being granted to all properties adjacent to the road.

The 6 cap could be in an equally dangerous neighborhood, but it's close by to lots of businesses, shopping, or a university and demands increasing rents each year.Cap rate is not necessarily the best gating or threshold metric to use when determining if a property should be a target of acquisition -- the cap rate ultimately serves as a yield measure based on assumptions such as a one year time horizon and cash purchase, which allows it to be calculated as a direct capitalization.

Assuming the next one will be MFR, refinance into having 5 or fewer properties that are financed.

Another one that may helps is The Book on Managing Rental Properties: A Proven System for Finding, Screening, and Managing Tenants with Fewer Headaches and Maximum Profits by Heather and Brandon Turner.  

I'm in Indianapolis and have experience with quite a few companies, and there are definitely some danger points involved in investing and rehab.

If you can't do that, a loan like this can become very dangerous, especially if you don't have other income to support it if things go south.

As a previous poster pointed out, even when the benefits end, there are fewer jobs to return to. 

I talked to an attorney who looked over my current situation (1 LLC) and recommended instead of having one LLC holding 15+ properties to divide them among smaller LLCs that contain fewer properties to separate them in case of a lawsuit.