Can I just find a reputable agent from here and tell them what property I'm interested in? 

You don’t have to go out and find reputable vendors, your property manager has already done the work for you. 

I would not want to jeopardize others' reputation.

So please refer me to reputable contractors or if you are a contractor please DM me.

I’m also a chemical engineer, currently working in a manufacturing plant South side of Chicago.

Does anyone have strategies or ideas and/or reputable contacts for refinancing?  

Any good transactional lender will have worked with hundreds of escrow companies so you can be sure to get a reputable, national company to check with.

I am in the process of buying a very nice modular home, which was built in 2008 and sits on a large crawl space. It has many options and includes 1 acre of land. It is located in the country, on a main route, and in a...

Paste this into a Google search and read the first couple of threads:site:www.biggerpockets.com delayed financing ruleYou can keep it in your names with adequate liability insurance protection ($2mm+ umbrella), deed it to your LLC after the fact (very common), or deed to a land trust with your LLC having a beneficial interest (less common and more expensive, but better Due-on-Sale protection reputedly, as transferring to a land trust is not considered a "sale", and the granting of a beneficial interest to the LLC is not a public disclosure).

This technique has a bad reputation because unscrupulous investors (aka con men) set the lease/option up for the tenant/buyer to fail with the intention of pocketing the option money and getting another sucker.