The reality if she couldn't be happy in he own skin she wasn't going to be happy anywhere. 

In this world you need money to make money the goal to get the most leverage of what you can get out of your small money.Here are some examples:Wholesaling you need to put money in escrow (not alot but you still need to put money in there, plus it can be refundable if you put it that way in your conract), and also you need money to market and find properties.Buying a rental, you have costs for the loan (downpayment and closing costs)Subject to deal, you will still have closing costs at least with the title company, might be able to get ride of downpayment.Hardmoney lenders and private money lenders, the requirements vary but you need an insane deal and high interest rate to get zero downpayment but you still have to payclosing cost with the title company.I don't mean to be discouraging quite the contrary I want you to see reality so you can make an actionable plan. 

Are my expectations anywhere close to reality?

Not that it cant be done in theory but theory and books are not reality on the ground..

Is it possible in reality to buy HUD home in CA somewhere Ventura-Simi Valley-Camarillo-Oxnard or Lancaster-Lake Los Angeles, etc.

We are a casualty of business realities, and BP is fine and dandy with that.This is why I am asking Scott if there is a way that makes sense.

I recently been bit by a good bug (enSHEpreneurs)that I’m hoping I can turn into reality.

I realize that's probably not a reality, but at the very least someone who is familiar with laws regarding residential dams. 

The reality is the buyer to deal with that has to get it much cheaper to make it worth their while. 

It may be what you can get.So you desire to invest $32K to $35K (depending on doing the estimated repairs) for a property that you calculate cash flow at $200 to $300 using optimistic maintenance/cap expense, vacancy, and PM estimates that if I used my cap expense/maintenance numbers for So Cal would bring this to negative cash flow (I am sure in Columbus the cap expense is a little less but a lot of the costs are material costs).I suspect the reality of this purchase is that it will cash flow less than $100/month over the long term if nothing catastrophic happens (one of my duplexes got hit by 2 hurricanes to give you a very unlucky, real example).You will want to do better.