He says he will set up the LLC for you and lists his company as the registered agent and as the person setting up the new LLC.  

I'm a Mortgage Loan Originator and my company has some great investor products.

Confirm with title company that understands local transfer tax regs but in most states, even if transferred for a nominal amount there are transfer tax consequences based on the assessed value.

We will pay the Z people for low quality leads, r.com for junk leads, 100 other lead companies for junk leads and try to call FSBOs and Expireds and do anything not to call or not to call people we know. 

I'd advise resending the contract, this time with your EMD included, and arranging for it to be wired directly to the attorney or title company. 

If it was going to be a STR I would be more inclined to fix but get a pool company out to estimate.

I've done door to door for 3 pest control companies.

Mortgage company may require the appraisal but what may happen is that you would have to fund 20% of appraised value plus the difference between the appraised value and sale price.

I'm trying to compare prices across different models / companies.

As far as automating as much as possible and treating the properties as a professional business, is using custom email address for each unit (like: 123StreetA at company dot com*) taking it too far?