Then you open an escrow account and everybody wires funds, the escrow company gives an accounting and you put the money into the LLC account.

Yet, that's not the intent.So you incentize companies to bring work to your state by making yourself more "tax competitive," and thus make more money. 

You can maybe try dangling some future work in front of his face and see if he'll get his act together to finish up this 30k project and then just don't give him anything in the future.Overall, having a boots on the ground project manager (such as paying your property management company 10% project management fee) is really the best way to go about it.

My company is well staffed now but when we were starting out I frequently hosted many properties while traveling. 

From what I've read here in Texas it's better to go with the contract that the TREC offers since title companies prefer it but where I'm confused is if I have to use that contract twice?

Is hiring a property management company the only way out, or are there other ways to manage these responsibilities effectively without it consuming my thoughts?

In the time I do have, I'm interested in supplementing my primary job income by creating a rental real estate company (becoming a landlord for a few properties).

doulble closings while once popular and most every title company did them that is not the case. 

Multiple, billion dollar companies are investing substantial amounts of money into our area, such as Intel, Google, and Amazon.

He did not open an account with the Gas company, so we don't know how the account was open with his information.The rental property is manage through a property management company.