(Yes I hire a rental property CPA, no I haven't discussed my delusions of grandeur with him yet) 

Hi BP Family,Father keeps telling me investing outside of your area (out of state/city) and hiring a property management company is a ridiculously bad move for a newbie investor. 

Clearly if you want to destroy an entire industry, you should hire me right now and then practice your evil laugh until the market, inevitably, crashes.)After more than a year without full-time work, I'm in no position financially to start investing in real estate...but I'm planning ahead.

There are complained that hire people to fill the seats to try to buy as many as they can for volume.

Anyhoot, I am finally coming to the end of attorney review on my first deal and I am up in the air with what I want to do with the property.  

And notice the very last sentence above: that means hire an attorney and spend a few hundred bucks.

We were very very careful to make sure this wouldn't happen because of all the interest in the property and it's common for people to pull these shenanigans to get a property under contract and accepted for a ridiculous price and then later back out and reduce the offer for the "appraised value" so we wrote a special clause into our counter proposal.On top of all this the roofer that I had hired took my $1k and ran off with the material money and also hired and scammed another roofing company that tore off the existing roof.

If you have no intention on listing the house instead of wasting an agents time with a fake listing appointment you could hire a realtor to do a BPO (Broker Price Opinion) which should only cost about $50 and should provide you with enough information to see if the appraiser was way off.

Finding a partner or mentor can cost money on your first few deals, hiring a guru costs money out of pocket. 

(my bf can do most construction type work, but there are situations where he may not be available so I'd have to do it myself or hire someone?