It may depend on county but in fairfax county the owner of the property can pull the permits and act as the GC.

I'm hoping that I pulled the right straw and now I have a mentor/business partner to help jump start my REI career. 

If you pulled it from zillow or the like, don't trust it.

Just for grins I pulled up the HCAD page for a medium sized apartment complex in my neighborhood.

If an agent that you have an agency agreement with pulls a move like that then they are violating their license regulations, and can be called up before their Real Estate commission and potentially lose their license.

I'd been researching REI for probably close to a year now before I thought I was ready to pull the trigger.

Here is my question: given that we can pull off collecting $80k per year for one building a year for first 3-4 years, and 2 buildings a year after the first 4 properties, is it realistic to get to where we want to be in 6-8 years which is 10 buildings and $10k cash flow a month?

Not bad.Now if you're able to do a cash out refi after a year, you can pull that 28k back out and  have little to no money in the deal and that house is still going to look the same.

Pull the death certificate.

Could I pull a @Brandon Turner and spend a year or two as a loan officer just so one of us has a W2 job?