I want to make a lease agreement for a decent amount of rent, to cover my costs of major repairs just in case, and pay my Papa a couple hundred for lot rent so he can cover property taxes.

Losing literally hundreds of thousands of dollars simply because I can’t find the money in time.

I agree with your contractor's description of the process.The engineer will probably charge several hundred dollars for a report, and when you get it, it might be that the rehab costs are too high to make the property a good deal. 

I read about Residential Building Codes, which consist of hundred or thousands of pages and is updated almost yearly, differing depending on state.

When you post on the internet you may get literally hundreds of inquiries.

I always pay my architect a couple of hundred bucks to do it

This ended up saving me hundreds of dollars on international calling charges. 

After that, there are hundreds of KW reviews that say their monthly fees are too high, but no specifics.I wanted to work as a real estate agent because my current job has a fixed, limited income.  

We have been doing this for years with hundreds of clients set up in the best states.

On the other hand, if you pay them to come out, that is different but then that would be quite expensive for you so I would not recommend that approach either.It is best to learn how to properly estimate rehab costs yourself so you can get a close idea of the costs, then once under contract, get your contractor out there for a hard bid - (there are literally hundreds of threads on this topic, many of which I have contributed to) so simply use the search function to search for "estimating rehab costs" or anything similar to that.