@Albert Johnson I recently did an “upgrade” ($10,000ish) for an extremely vocal tenant.

Almost everywhere, STRs are becoming extremely competitive.

You can try quit-claiming to an LLC after you close, but you risk the triggering the Due on Sale clause that nearly every mortgage has now.

Seems extremely high but maybe it’s typical? 

I talk to people every day that are "waiting to see what happens" and "waiting for rates to come down", too many to count.People want to buy property but don't feel comfortable pulling the trigger now with so much uncertainty which has led us to having more inventory since 2010 in Austin.

The one caveat I will add is that it is extremely location-dependent. 

If it were me, I would probably list my original house for rent to gauge the interest before pulling the trigger on buying the second house you have selected. 

The arv will be around $1,050,000 on the extremely low end.

I find data on free sites like Zillow extremely helpful for days on market for certain homes, and it allows you to sort by bedrooms to see how long a potential property may sit on the market at this moment (great for comping rent prices in the area as well)if I were to live in the property, I would take advantage of the FHA low down payment option to keep cash in my pocket for Reno costs  Hope this helps!

You can look to seller financing or other creative means if that is an option with the seller.Either way, I would say be careful if you do purchases below 100K that result in a loan below 100K, Options are severely limited and there is often an "interest rate penalty" if the loan is at this level and it is EXTREMELY challenging when the loan if below 75K.