I am in Chester County and invest primarily in SFR buy-and-holds in Delaware County. 

Would it be wise to just setup a DE, WY, or NV LLC to hold my notes?

Areas you might consider would be Lancaster, Circleville, Pataskala, Newark, Marysville, Delaware, etc.

We have seen companies de facto steal from their investors and conduct business in the most crooked manner.  

I usually end up doing excel spreadsheets at the end of the year.Need help with BookkeepingAccounting1031 exchanges coming upA little commercial properties retail/officetax planning, Delaware statutory trusts or other Prop Management S-CorpPartnershipsEstate PlanningEntities- Setting up some LLCs keeping it simple but effective for liability and keeping it simple enough for taxesApartment buildingsFlip strategiesI like to keep things as simple as possible while taking full adantage of tax code and aggressive long term tax advantages.

There are some great rental areas in the suburbs of Philly too such as Delaware County (Upper Darby, Parkside, Prospect Park, Brookhaven). 

Further into the passivity spectrum are investments in a syndication(something I've never done) or investments into Delaware Statutory Trusts(something I've done plenty of.)

Spreading it out over multiple projects also de-risks each investment.

I'm not sure about South Carolina, but in Delaware - we would send the security deposit charge letter (here has to be within 20 days) with full amount due. 

We have inventory in big cities like DC and NY but also small towns like Dover, DE.