You can very easily wait on them to say that they will take the deal and then put it under contract, and that is always a legal way to go for your sales.

Also, REOs can be easily viewed prior to buying.

B) Make good friends with a small banker and do a couple of deals with him/her to get a rapport.C) Buy RE with a personal guarantee (but deed it at closing to the LLC) so you can get a balance sheet on your LLC that demands respect from the small banker in point B aboveThis will allow you to do business more easily on behalf of your business rather than you as an individual investor.

low cost,no maintenance, easily acquireable from out of state owners.

In a home run system you can easily have in excess of 25 feet of additional pipe to heat up.

Make the name something that a person can say easily on the phone.

As Peter said above, I would most certainly hide a fee of that size on a blind HUD and do a double close.However transaction funding won't easily be available for that size.  

I'm not a lawyer, and this issue could easily (more accurately) be resolved by a local attorney, but homestead laws are pretty wide reaching in that they prevent certain sales of property to protect the family.

@Theo Hicks Finding properties in the AO with the SOS is a great idea and this is something that can be easily outsourced to a virtual assistant that can be found on upwork.Jim---when you say mid-large size apartments...what range are you specifically looking for as far as $$$ and # of doors?

I recommend using a the HOLD spreadsheet: https://www.kellerink.com/resources/Easily lets you plug in the numbers and track cashflows and ROI.