It strikes me odd that there is no common tool that facilitates escrow between renters/landlords for these transactions.

In a rural area with no jobs, your odds of finding a good tenant or a good buyer are limited. 

No one can tell us what they did with the funds, I find that odd.

I quit my day job as an Electrical Engineer from buying tax liens and turning them into mostly passive LTR's.Yes their are big risks, takes a lot of research, a lot of cash to increase your odds and it is much more difficult now because more people are doing it and driving up the auction priced.I typically get 2 or 3 more houses every year from the previous years tax lien auction.I do not have to foreclose to get my tax deed on unredeemed liens.

My purpose for the HELOC is to get into a property without having a home sale contingency to increase my odds of the offer getting accepted.

In fact, odds of a June hike should be higher than a cut.

You're a shareholder of that S-corp, and for some odd reason not directly but through a disregarded LLC.

Seems like right now there are some odd dynamics going on in the single family market in some areas. 

That's odd, it shows up to me.

I thought that was odd, but since I am new to the market I wasn't sure what peak demand season actually was.