Regarding your other questions:  - If the going value is $260/SF, why would you pay more than that?  

When you pay off a mortgage you pay the interest for all the years you didn't own the house?!?

Screening tenants is initially Padsplit. 

Keep in mind of the I/O(payments/period) and game plan on how fast you'd like to pay it down. 

Imagine making millions of dollars over the course of your career and then having to pay 30-50% every year to uncle sam instead of compounding that cash over time.This is exactly what real estate professionals have learned to mitigate.To reduce their taxable income, they just buy a building every year, do a cost seg, and use depreciation to reduce their tax liability dramatically.Their personal wealth snowball grows much larger and much faster than their W2 counterparts who give most of their money back to the government each year.Following this strategy as a real estate professional is one of best ways to end up with a much larger net worth at the end of your career.

Washer/dryers are often abused, so there's the initial cost of purchase and the risk of increased repairs.

A tenant not paying has nothing to do with us either.

The only purpose of the account would be to collect payments and pay bills like taxes and insurance on assets held by the LLC.

The hang up is getting deals formally drawn up.One idea:- I buy the property and pay 25% DP, then they provide capital after the closing and I pay them P&I over 5-10 years.

Somebody somewhere had to pay for that real estate at some point and has continued to pay for it since.