Don't let business decisions affect your relationship--sometimes you're going to have to decide to do something that will be taken hard, most often it's conversations that must be had that could be offensive.

Maybe you have a KILLER website and he's unsophisticated enough to believe you have a lot of knowledge and experience in the industry (hard to believe, but possible....) or maybe he's a shark looking for an easy meal in a shallow pond.No offense to you and your eager desire to get into real estate, but this guy sounds like a scammer. 

If they decide you're acting as an agent without a license:1st offense - $500 fine2nd offense - felony 

I think part of the offense they took may also have been from the fact that they had invested a fair bit of time in working with me, and I had then turned around and not hired them after seeming to be very interested (which I genuinely was -- but I also wanted to make sure I was getting the very best balance between price and quality that I could).I don't have a lot of experience dealing with contractors, so I'm honestly wondering if I committed a big faux pas, or if Company B is just unprofessional.

No offense to your mother, but if she had been raising the rent every year over the last 20 years, she'd be sitting on a few million instead of pondering her retirement plan. 

And I mean no offense whatsoever but based on the negative cash flow deal you're in now and some of your assessments and replies in this thread, I suspect that you might be in a position where you'd benefit from further research and continuing to educate yourself on investing (this forum, local REIAs, networking with other investors, etc), as well as the specific local market you're looking to invest in before you just pull cash out and potentially find yourself in another negative cash flow situation and/or upside-down equity position by either not knowing the market you're buying in well enough or by not being experienced enough to know when a deal is really a deal and when it's not.

@Matthew Olszak Jamie Engledow no offense but this is bad advice.

I deleted your's when we moved to VT (no offense) because I didn't expect to live in GA again.

After I found out all of these things I went full offensive in dealing with him and took over the project myself. 

I mean no offense but who would list a million dollar property with someone they don't know who and just happened to solicit them.