I require tenants to take care of "ordinary pest control" which includes flies, spiders, the occasional mouse, etc.

Craigslist and Hot Pads are the marketing websites that I use.

But as for the letters themselves I am using a hand written font from dafont dot com and text boxes to place the text on the margins of yellow legal pad paper.

The mouse and elephant works well until you have your own funds.  

Carpet cleaning doesn't do a darn thing when the pee soaks through the pad and into the subfloor.

Pads are generally generally worth 70x the monthly rent if your property is on city water and sewer.

(a hand written agreement on a yellow pad is a contract)Note* Get educated & seek legal advice on any particular laws & regulations in your state as they pertain to real estate contracts, buying a principal residence directly from an owner who may be either in foreclosure or under any sort of duress that could potentially compromise your transaction.2) Once the contract is signed, do I work with a RE Agent to get it closed.If you have a property under contract, RE agents can help you find a buyer and list the property on the MLS, if thats what you mean.

Though I’d rather not generalize, I am qualified to say that many property managers pad contractor estimates in order to make extra income when managing investor properties. 

I am seeing quite a few do this practice of what seems "padding the numbers".

I do see flips come on the market with what I would consider to be sub-par rehabs semi-regularly, but it's hard to know from a distance whether they did it intentionally just to pad their bottom line, if they're inexperienced, or if they just aren't good at what they do.