Do some research to figure out what type of property—long-term rental (LTR) or short-term rental (STR)—best suits your goals.

However, there wasn’t much residential use and I couldn’t figure out where the housing neighborhoods are.

You'll just have to figure out how much utilities normally are for your calculations. 

I'm going to start reaching out soon to a friend of a family member who owns a local PM group with roughly 1000 doors for lower income, just to pick his brain, but I can envision a scenario where if I needed to partner with someone to get my first deal and gain some creditability and experience, he may be willing to assist.

Surely others have this issue and have figured out a workaround, any suggestions???  

If so, it would make sense to figure that out first before deciding on a specific area.

In your situation I would keep this cash cow and figure out the best way to pull out a little of the equity to buy the next deal.

Really what I am trying to figure out is what is the ratio of value for the various things that different partners would bring to the table like: down payment, long term management, rehab labor, acting as contractor for rehab but not doing the work yourself.

Figure out what your property taxes will be at the new sales price.

figuring that if I track and work towards creating and "presenting" 250 specific deals to my clients.My Theory being: Tracking "deals presented" will pull forward the need to go search and find deals, and will also drive the deals closed and revenue numbers, so we shall see but logics out to me so I'm liking it so far.