No brokerages are, in and of themselves, investor-friendly.

No experience with it, but I know there are franchises like Motto Mortgage, that provide mortgage in a box essentially, or check bizbuysell and see if there is an existing firm available for sale.

It doesn't mean that it is a bad place to invest, but you are right to be scared and proceed with caution if you are an out of town investor with no knowledge of the area. 

However if you have no transactions I don't think it will be of much benefit.

I am not yet ready for commercial investments, but I will be one day and figured there is no reason not to start learning the basic principles about cap rates today.

- but you can find them online by googling for them (if no better option).  

When people say I am going to do the renovations myself, they usually mean doing everything without proper permits and then they get screwed when they go to sell.If you can find a house hack where the side you will live in needs cosmetic, direct replacement (no permits) work, that would be ideal because you can do both by living in and soft-flipping your side while getting income on the other.

The water heater is turned off (no light on the dial - used to be green) and there's no hot water in the unit.

The new loan would be 30 years at around 8.15% interest but of course not have PMI (also no fees, points, etc since they are incentivizing me to refi with them as my current servicer).

However, on that form, there's no option for a trust as a reason for tax exemption.