Anything from leaky roofs/windows, flooded basements/crawls, and failing drain fields/septic's.

If no back up and just a smell, pouring a gallon or two of water down each floor drain in the basement can often help with that. 

I would suggest winterizing, drain the water lines, antifreeze in toilets, leave lowest faucet open etc, incase the heat shuts off 

Hi Marisha,Apparently, when someone knows they have drained you of all your money, they can then wait about 3 months and sue you- knowing you cannot spend any more money to counter the sue process.

One of the largest cost is going to be in bringing the lines (gas/electric/plumbing) over and of course the drains for the waste water. 

Every so often water gets in. 1 time it was seepage from the floor and a french drain solved that in one section.

If it's not draining completely, or not running the full spin cycle they could be starting out with excess water. 

If you don't find one and you see a 4" line going int the basement floor than you have a chance of installing a conventional toilet close to this pipe but still a few inches above for proper drain. 

I wanted a larger down payment to be easier on me financially, but I would rather have that extra 11.5% sitting in a bank account and slowly drain it to cover the difference between my monthly expenses and rent.

The tiles adjacent to the wall and the baseboard have been removed, the drain tile put in, concreted over, and this has left a depressed section 18”wide that has a drop off of ¼” from the existing tile.For a quick, low-cost solution, I was thinking of putting floor leveler in, then painting it a similar color to the tile that’s there, then putting the baseboard.