For those interested, a combination of mortgages with no “due on sale” clause, mortgage companies loose due diligence, and title insurers willingness to “turn a blind eye” to practices that wouldn’t pass scrutiny now, resulted in tactics like the “second mortgage crank” which not only allowed investors to purchase properties with no money out of pocket but allowed investors to actually walk away from closing with “cash in their pocket”.

Your investor agent should be walking properties for you and providing an in-depth breakdown on the location, scope of work, renovation budgets, etc.

However, if you feel you need their input earlier, you could offer to pay for their visit to walk the property with you pre-inspection.

At yet another sale there was a brick row house/town house for sale that looked good from the street, but since it was in the middle of the row, to see the back of the house, you had to walk around the block and see the house from the alley, where the entire 3 story brick back wall of the house was laying in the back yard, and there was no back wall standing. 

Don't forget, you’re going to be out 10%+ in closing costs so you’ll walk with zero cash and pin your hopes on them paying you 20-30 years from now if that’s all they put down. 

Here's a big "math" you overlooked for quite a few years.Right now $388k in equity, minus (let's go all out) $100k in closing costs, gets you a walk away of $288k in equity.Use that $288k as a 20% DP, and you should have $1.44M in property value,...not $415k. 

I try sending a video or doing a live video walk-through with them so they can get a better idea of the layout, condition, neighborhood, etc.2.

At the completion of your due diligence, you have 3 choices; accept the property as-is and move to step 4, reject the property and walk away, or ask the Seller to correct any items that you request. 

I would have to have a walk through with a professional to give me an appropriate estimate. 

Wiring for special purpose equipment would be like having to install 250V wiring to run a commercial walk-in freezer.