I recently bought my first home, and my real estate agent automatically signed me up for something called "HomeBot".

And off market does not automatically equal a good deal.It can work, but it's a bad idea for a first time out of state investor.

He gives off sleazy used car salesman vibes when communicating with him and I worry about giving him any money only to never hear from him again. 

And the majority of commercial lenders have rates in the 6s or 7s right now for most real world scenarios, and being overly worried or concerned about if it's 5 units or 500 units is absurd, both the rents and the loan size will automatically scale up and down accordingly (if anything, the larger unit counts scale better, so limiting someone to X units makes zero sense).

It ran after a car coming up the driveway the other day and was barking at our guests. 

If recourse for any default is not automatic nor clearly spelled out, I would walk-away.  

So from funding balt city row houses to loudoun county :)Yeah it’s funny even on a personal level I lived in D.C. last year and the crime while I was never a victim there were probably at least a half dozen shootings within a few blocks a my apartment (which was literally across from where the nats play, a good part of town) and literally so many car jackings I lost count, eventually at the end of the year I was like I’m not paying 3k a month to have constant shootings next door, I’ve ended up for a variety of reasons spending at town of time on the eastern shore, and I kind of realized this is walkable & safe & affordable, I kind of think small towns are the future.  

We built the bosses sister a 3500 square foot home. 4 bedroom, 2 1/2 baths, cavernous kitchen/dining/living room with 25' cathedral ceiling, massive laundry room, massive entry, office, gym, multiple pantries and closets, 2 car garage with 2nd floor game room.  

LLC will NOT just protect you automatically, and the veil can be very easily pierced.

Definitely more of a suburban location, probably 20-25 min by car to the downtown area from either.