Did you pull the permit and still violate the issue that needed the variance? 

If the deal is good enough (i.e. has meat on the bones), investors usually have no issues obtaining financing via hard money, private money or other lending options.Your experience will likely be similar so I'd recommend spending time/effort on finding and negotiating deals.

We'll be moving back to CA - and in the grand scheme of things, housing will be much more expensive there and most likely a larger barrier of entry $ wise if I were wanting to house hack. 

Fires aren't really an issue unless you live in the sticks.

Single might not have as much cash flow, but multi family properties create more potential for issues since there are likely multiples of everything (furnaces, hot water heaters etc)-what property class are you looking for.

I spoke with someone who had a similar issue and proved that the property was being used as a 2 unit rental because they had a lease agreement in place and never discontinued use for more than 3 years since most recent rental license.With 3 units its a bit of a tougher battle.

The one issue is that you can only purchase real estate "Cash" in general as most lenders won't let IRA's take out loans, but I've seen it done if the deal is right.

In that scenario, Fannie/Freddie have a 15% down option (but see above about market conditions) but they still won't lend to an LLC.Now, I feel that transferring your property to your LLC after closing is a non-issue. 

I've seen that you do a good amount of cleaning them up before you stick a renter in there so perhaps the issue not so much the capex but the property management.Keep killing it! 

Why would anyone want to deal with tenants and all the issues?