I feel like getting my foot in the door now with this one property would allow me to learn without being too overwhelmed.

No worries, it's all in the normal course of REI.

Is this normal?

Factoring market conditions at the time of refinance, I negotiated a lower rate and conceded a lower term anticipating rates to normalize in the 4%-5% range by 2026.

So, normalize those values, the state each year will determine the ratio by which the assessment differ's from today's values.

Is the below fee schedule normal?

New owners are normally at 2 extremes...

Baselane seams to be more normal for transfer/deposit limits and you can create multiple virtual accounts for each property.

In the first 2 minutes of setting foot in the house, I could tell not a whole lot had been done to the property.

and that was owner occ.. todays rates are pretty normal actually. what you can do if you want though is find a really good HML and let them place a loan for you making 10 to 12% while your wait for things to change to a situation that you feel you want to move forward be more net return than buying a rental thats for sure. of course no tax bene's but there really is not that much tax benefit on one rental.. so just some alternatives.