I.e. say your plumber has a fixed $150 service call fee.  

Also never pay any upfront fees and go with a trusted lender who closes through a title company. 

There should always be timeline contingencies factored into each projects specifics.

They also know about real estate so less likely to charge you extra fees to get an appraisal or BPO because they can estimate the value themselves.

I agree with the others here that say you need to have some skin in the game, if you are going to live there yourself, get an FHA loan rather than owner financing, you can get a 3.5% down loan, personally I do not love these as they require  PMI which is an additional expense, and you also need  bring additional funds for closing at least for taxes, title, attorney and transfer fees . borrowing from anyone else for the down payment, to include a personal loan from the bank is not a good idea, those again will be higher int. rate.

Realistically, to make the business work, they are hoping all the people who are using the "free services" to eventually go into banking where they can collect fees for anything bank related.

Once you pay realtor fees, closing costs, sellers want 10k for points and concessions.

It may sound nice to pay a 6% management fee but the extra fees can add up to be more than the other company that charges 10% with no additional fees.

Not necessarily a scam, maybe someone trying to save fees. 

My real estate agent thinks I'll only get 1.1 million for my home but due to a few factors I think it should be more. 1.