I feel like I have my bases covered, but am wondering if I'm missing anything obvious or if you have any tried and true questions that help weed out the bad ones.Overall - can you help me get over the fear I'm having about handing my units to a company who (seemingly) will sweep in, re-lease to their paperwork (thus charging me 8 re-leasing fees), disrupt the tenant and their current habits (all of which are well-trained save for an older Section8 gentleman) and ask them to make changes? 

I agree with @Jay Shapiro, the placement fee is to cover marketing, screening, showing, etc... they did none of this.

I don’t negotiate if I already have what I want/need to cover my costs to bring it back to “rent ready” condition.  

Is there an opportunity to improve this rate through better management, screening, updates?

In terms of investing with low money down, you have to start networking to find other investors that would be willing to put money in with you to cover the down-payment and closing costs.

Tenants are hard on the little things like fans, blinds, screens and they add up.  

You are building room in the backend of the note to cover your investor's entitlement while still making the money you're looking for up front.If you don't have a passive investor to sell to, then you're going to have to rethink your strategy here.Sidenote: If this loan is to a consumer at 12% interest, you might have what the CFPB calls a High-Cost Mortgage on your hands, in which, there's a lot more compliance to deal with.

Brandon Kreig runs it, they cover a different topic each week, but there is also time for networking!

He also couldn't rent it for enough to cover his payments.So he had 1 month before the bank would start foreclosure proceedings and he was desperately trying to just break even, that's all he could hope for.When I offered to take over his payments, what do you think he said?

You also won't have your home owners insurance coverage in place to cover your risk.