I'd first discover that idea from a book "The richest man in Babylon."  

The PM can make or break you--being remote, you will basically be at their mercy to deal with problematic tenants, find tenants and keep vacancy low, collect your money, find contractors... in short, every aspect of actually running the business. 

Some did good but few had bad luck with tenants/vacancy/ or other emergency that hindered with mortgage payments and had their properties go into short sale or foreclosure even with a decent paying full time job.

In short, CA is very business friendly, landlord friendly...not.b) And how do you propose to "separate out asset holding from operations side" ?

When that life emergency happens and a tenant can’t work, even for a short time, section 8 kicks in more rent so you still get paid. 

This is done often in short sales when the irs receives nothing.

While performing some preliminary research on rental properties, I discovered that there are several strategies that can be executed.

However, if you are looking at short term flips, the chances of you getting screwed on stock market skyrocketing during that short period is slim so it may workout. 

The complex used to be a low end motel until it was converted into a kind of short term apartment complex.

If it's worth less than 115k your only option is to buy it through a short sale.