They can sell all day and you can either buy into their snake oil salesmenship or you can look at the property yourself run your numbers and then make a offer based on your DD.  

this time as a guest, we rented a farm house in Sequoia National Park, beautiful house surrounded by rivers , horses, cattle, gorgeous view, ... park the car in front of the house, walk into the house and start checking out... take stuff to the kitchen and guess what is posted on the fridge: Huge picture of a rattle snake, with the word WARNING in red, right above another post of a huge picture of a black tarantula same scary sign.

At worst, it seems like the CEO is attempting to sell snake oil to other investors.

Like snake oil if the only one saying it is great is the one selling the snake oil you might get concerned about how great it is. 

Somebody just tried renting my place with an ESA that is a cobra snake.

Pleasant and we snaked that deal before the market really got hot there so did well.But then I started buying lots.. for 20 to 40k each.. and  30 some new builds later.. and I have morphed into buying 500k plus lots in the expensive areas and going for that 2 mil exit price.. got one in the bag so far and 3 under construction and another 7 in the 400 to 600k range.. market has cooled though I think most will tell you that.. so we will see how it all shakes out but it was a great run there for 5 years.. for me the rentals did not work as prop tax's are so high for non owner you really need to get some pretty good deals for those to pencil.. 

I eat lightning and crap thunder.

I will gladly share the challenges we have faced so far (HOA violations, snakes hanging from lights, low pricing, high pricing etc...)2.

I'm certainly not for snaking out of agreements, but it's good to at least know what all your potential options are.$11k is a lot of money to throw away.

If it's not the same REI company, I imagine they could snake my lead once they see the taxes are past due.