Our plan is to buy and hold, live in it a few years, do some rehab and the eventual goal being to turn it into a long term rental property.  

Spend some time on the site looking to connect with others in your area. 

I plan to move to the Bothell area (or surrounding areas) near Seattle and it seems like the a great area!

I am planning on using heloc funds for down payments.

I also have plans on turning my company into a brokerage, is getting an agent license a prerequisite for that?

good concept Bryan, flipping vs buy and hold are keys to how wealth can be generated by using two different methods of investing aka envesting as i like to say, i'm a newbie in this industry my plan is to buy and hold rentals and later refinance the property and reap the benefits of the cash flow to purchase rehab and flip discounted properties that i find along the way, my strategy may be different than most but most of my educational coaching suggested looking at every deal as if it were flip and or rehab, i agree with Bryan, if i can get the cash flow and equity that buy and hold offers then that is the strategy that works best for me, but if i run across a flip/rehab that is worth my while then i execute accordingly but leverage is a important aspect of the buy and hold strategy will be implementing in my world.......good luck on your investing journey

The upside to all this is that it has forced me to spend more time looking for better more efficient contractors that I can trust and I believe this will failure will lead the groundwork for better flips in the future. 

Sounds like you have a good plan outlined. 

I also don't really want to spend money to sit with an attorney.

I plan to live in the basement and rent out the rest of the house.