In terms of good reviews, the best compliment you can give someone that gives you a good experience is to refer others to them to receive the same.

My question is in terms of creating a contract- how does that work, who do we go to, what contract do we use?

Flip enough times and you will be able to do as @J Scott describes, which is funnel the profits into another investment vehicle that is a much more passive income stream.RE is attractive because the sheer returns can outperform just about everything you can think of in terms of relative safety of principal vs. rate of return.

Can anyone point me in the direction of the professional to speak to in terms of deciding which is best for me?

Refinances are less time sensitive than purchases, so start the refinance now, with a lock period long enough to cover however long the refinance might have taken (I don't know your situation or the lending culture in your area in terms of "how long does a refi take?") 

The Mechanicsburg one was a bit tougher (it's downtown - I did find renters but the application pool was not impressive in terms of income / credit).

In terms of reviewing applications, running bkgd checks, and creating a lease that works for me, I feel that I can handle all that (I have a little experience since I was the condo assoc president for a couple years).

Also, it looks to me that Bakersfield CA might be a bit better in terms of cashflow than LA.  

It seems like you really need to go the whole hog and buy a $200-$300K property, scrape and rebuild for $400K or so, and sell for ~$1M to see the true margin that makes things repeatable and scalable.At least, that's what I'm seeing in terms of a strategy that does not rely on the red hot appreciation of the last few years to carry values over a given 6-12 month period.

That last one is a pretty high bar to cross in terms of giving them an offer that sounds better.