Where west side were normally newer ranchers and easy to get rehabbed without dealing with lath and plaster.. old electrical plumbing. etc etc.

In general, a commission is normally only paid by you during selling.

As part of your "return", take what you would normally be paying for rent and subtract your new $200 mortgage payment from that, that is essentially your return.

This is my first purchase and first time ever reaching out to contractors, but I'm not sure if some of their requests are normal.

Here in Dallas normal $100.Joe Gore

Even if they initially say they won't finance them, make sure they are checking with both their normally lending unit, and someone who might handle portfolio lending, and if they have a commercial arm that does real estate lending check there too! 

This blog is not so much of the normal type of blog where I give a narrative on a subject.

The large commercial projects in the pipeline are huge and large new projects being announced regularly so we should see this get back to normal or better in 12 - 24 months.I don't monitor the outlying counties as much, but they still look depressed.  

No you probably shouldn't have your deposit be your entire down payment, in every market I've done the normal deposit is somewhere between 1% and maybe $10k-$15k max so unless you are doing FHA with a really low down payment it probably wouldn't make sense to have them add up to the down payment.

Showing a occupied unit works for some but even on normal circumstances I wait to show until it is vacant.