While they're great and have invited me over numerous times for a beer and BBQ, I don't want to blur the lines of our Tenant/Landlord relationship.

Along the way the GC and subcontracted plumber mentioned numerous times that they found great news or thought of more efficient solutions (i.e. the mainline plumbing under the basement was intact--that they had assumed was all broken and needed replacing).

Think “we just grabbed dinner and are going to watch a movie afterward”.

Yes too numerous to describe in a short reply - plus ethical issues

They dine out, watch a movie, or spend the day shopping in another city.

Then he discovered the judge from Housing court had previously put a demo order on the house due to a past owners negligence and not correcting numerous code violations, also recorded on title.

However, this strategy has been used successfully (without IRS challenge) by numerous property owners for nearly 20 years, including many public companies that have reported their transactions to the SEC, with the full acquiescence of their boards and outside auditors.

And that is the combination I used over a period of 7 years to take a duplex in Denver into a Long Island Sound Movie set and vacation rentals in FL and slowly turn those into primary residences which were then sold for the sailboat we lived on for a decade. 

Been reading numerous personal finance books and lurking BP for a few months now, but the savings are finally shaping up, so I've decided to take it more seriously :) I'm a recent college grad from the bay area who's been in industry for about 1-2 years now and I'm really interested in setting up a positive, reliable cashflow for myself to reach financial independence.

There are numerous ways an owner can carry financing.