Any time I've tried in the past, lets say out of 10 responses, maybe 3 can form a sentence and actually read what work I need done, 1 will show up to actually do the work, and 0.5 will do the work correctly.

You can also have a real estate attorney form a married couple LLC with an operating agreement that spells out terms you both agree to in any state. 

The list price is $400k higher than the calculated value of $1.5M… likely because the current owner sees the growth potential in the pro-forma numbers.

I have seen a lot of pro forma documents that say “rent at market - operating expense / cap rate=X value” when rents are clearly below what their calculation entails and operating expenses are likely more. 

What I'd also be be asking (well ahead of time) is to see a copy of a pro-forma on the subject property.  

Should I form a business structure for this for legal or tax purposes, other reasons, etc.?

BusinessRocket is a leading business formation company that handles all business entities such as corporation, LLC’s, DBA’s and many more.

The reason you form a business entity has everything to do with your goals.

I'm guessing their pro forma 18% "promise" is annualized, Meaning that it would be only 9% for this one project.

Going too far on aesthetics and still having below market rents does very little for value except make your pro forma look better.