One of the mortgage companies has approved me, subject of course to an appraisal.

I don't want to go to a company like h&r block, but none of the indie people have reviews or reputations. 

You don't need to...markups in retail are pretty uniform throughout the supply chain, and for public companies like Walmart, you can look at their quarterly filings to determine exactly what their margins are.With contractors, you don't have this same level of transparency, so if you want to ensure that you're getting reasonable prices, you need to do some additional investigation...

We have 2 LLC's that run management companies and 10 LLC's that do real estate investing.

Do we write a check and have the Title company hold it until work is complete?

If your main driver is saving money please pay the professionals.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

We have a small management company and our common practice is to inspect the units every three months or so.

However the Mortgage company told me that they will not proceed because the balance of the loan is 38k and since they cannot charge more than .05 percent, they wont do.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?