(Reason why I let him stay at the mortgage rent price was cause he fixed all issues that came back after the inspection, around $6k in expenses & sold me it at the price we first agreed on)

The only thing for you to do here is apologize for the harm that you've caused and set up a payment plan or whatever you can do to make it right and pay them back. 

What's causing this decline in closing times?

'HERE IS WHERE THE PROBLEM COMES IN'  The actual problem comes in that you have no idea who caused it or when. 

He has to hire out causing price fluctuations.

@Ryuji MoriWhat is your overall take on the trajectory of rental laws in NYS (possible good cause eviction law statewide)?

@Troy Forney - I feel like you might see some similarities but not being caused by the same issues. 

Our town is a small town and a new company has came in to mine cobalt which will bring several hundred more jobs to our area and that will cause more people to move here as the cost of living is very low in our area.

BP members constantly write posts saying they don't want to be bothered with day-to-day management and I found that having a PM was far worse than doing my own management because once I hired my PM I threw another 'Iron In The Fire', 'Threw In Another Wrench', or whatever you call it because now rather that dealing with tenants and resolving tenant issues in one quick move I now had to personally humble myself to dealing when a 'Fifth Wheel With Even More Moving Parts' and the decisions my PM made in regards to who they rented to and how they cleaned rentals BEFORE TENANTS MOVED IN was super scary and the damages caused by the PM resulted in costs of not one penny less than $8,000 to clean every house when a tenant moved, one house cost me $12,000 and a house in Idaho cost me $32,00 to clean and repair only the damages caused by a tenant who lived in the house for only 3 years with the exception of my costs to trim some trees.

Lack of egress, smoke detectors, ceiling heights, access to furnace boiler, etc so many things that can cause issues.You are asking about whether you should do a lease already sounds like you are trying to avoid an issue by saying there is no lease.