House is now estimated at around $500K.Since a large portion of the groundwork from the real estate agent have been done (finding buyer and negotiating a price), how would you move forward?

I’m the ground work and they are the funds.

In this market particularly, this is essential to being an investor who actually manages to grow their portfolio rather than one who is often disappointed and misses out on the deals.I can't emphasise enough how important it is to do this groundwork.

You need to start by doing your own research and showing that you have done the groundwork rather than having someone walk you through the basics.  

If you aren't disciplined with your current money, you won't be disciplined with investment money and the whole thing could come crashing down on you.Once you have the groundwork laid, it's time to start getting serious!

Just getting the groundwork started.

@Sean LasherOK then as long as your mortgage is current, then you have time to get your plan together to take a trip down to Davenport to take care of your business with the PM company.My point being right now you are not in emergency mode, so take your time planning out how to deal with this PM and lay the ground work for moving on if you need to do so.

I am planning on starting my Real Estate Investment journey in the next 12 months and am setting the ground work.

However I own properties in Ontario as well as done a lot of groundwork for buying vacation rentals in France.

Working now on property #2, and the process is going much faster as the groundwork was already laid for Property #1.I often recommend the course I took (Your First Rental Property by Paula Pant), but enrollment just closed for the Fall semester, so you'd need to wait until March (I think) for Spring to begin.