In other words, I would look for another property because this sounds like somethign that will require A LOT of patience, downtime, and work to get it up to speed.

Bump up the playback to play at 1.2-1.5x to speed up the learning a little bit.

Can I put more down in order to hopefully speed up the closing time?

I wish I had secured my partners a year ago when they were still giving them away ...I wish you the very best .God Speed, Michael Short 

I don't know the details.And, yes, motivated sellers are motivated for any number of reasons, and the sometimes want to trade their equity for speed and/or simplicity. 

State law also posts a 60MPH speed limit. 

The ISD moves so slow and I want to speed this up as much as possible.

Joined the local REIA when I first got here and that was a huge help in getting up to speed.  

Combining experiences and learning from each other's mistakes will speed up our learningDiffering perspectives.

That will really bring you up to speed with what's going on in the area.Second, connecting on here with local experts (investors and agents) is going to greatly shorten your learning curve, because we're dealing with real estate every single day and having conversations with sellers, buyers, and everyone else in between.