My partner and I have a document we work through to analyze deals.A structured Excel template for real estate deals which includes: basic property info like address, type, size, purchase price, and closing costs.

This is very basic knowledge, even among people who don’t invest in California.

Hopefully that will do the trick 👍🏻

That is a basic tenet of project management and something many investors fail to appreciate. 

I'm in the process of learning as much of the basics as possible before I dive in.

They ESTIMATE the value of the property, they do what you are doing basically and estimate the "REPLACEMENT VALUE". 

You are basically putting your faith in the manager and are blind to the property selection. 

Otherwise, I merely educated my clients in some fundamentals of taxation.So, if you don't know the basics, then any accountant will deliver "magic" results to you.

Other wise she could buy something with in a 3 to 5 hour drive for basically the same price and not have the weather issues.

Focus on basic houses that only need visible cosmetic work and are easy to resell.