Work with them to ensure they feel comfortable with you as the new property owner.

I believe it is over priced (originally for sale by owner for $280k,later listed through agent at $360k), but I feel like the seller may be open to a creative financing option. 

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

Feel free to reach out if you would like more information.

Feel free to reach out if you have any other questions! 

We feel bad that he did it for free, and he deserves to be paid for his time/effort, but if we pay him, now we have to go back to our tenant several months after the door was fixed and say “actually, we got charged after all, so now we need to pass that cost along to you”.

There are many loan programs to help out first time homebuyers so don't feel as if this is too ambitious when there are tools to help you out, like use here on the Forum!

They feel like they own your property.

Since I'm not a pigeon forge local, I also don't have a good feel for the appropriate cost of goods and services either.While I don't necessarily suspect anything nefarious from the management company, I don't now that our financial incentives are always well-aligned. 

Off market deals usually have nonrefundable deposits and a clunkier process that isn't as suited for out of state people until they have good contacts in the area to evaluate the property (mostly contractors that feel comfortable evaluating projects for you).