I have one of those coin operated timers from a campground shower and have thought about adapting it for use as an external hose bib.

I like the idea of added external crawlspace access for sure.That's a good suggestion Ryan.  

Ultimately, you are going to end up closing the loan with the lender you want... if there are external factors like bank relationship, or ease of communication, they will factor in.As for the family member... give them the heads up now.

Is someone close by using an extension cord and an external outlet to pirate electricity? 

Whether or not they will...I don't have my license yet (working on that), but given the circumstances of the transaction (not representing an external client, an innocuous mistake based on inexperience with this type of transaction), I'd probably be looking for a new broker if they wanted to charge me more than simple, reasonable expenses.

With as cheap as storage is these days, either locally on an external hard drive or even better in the cloud, there's not a big reason you can't keep the records for years.

I think if you ask most people in the know and see the unequivical data now, it says the worst part of this cycle is now over (short of some other external mechanism causing it to tumble again like Europe, our own Debt Crisis, etc).

an appraiser can comp oddball properties by assigning quantitative increments to each flaw or benefit of a property...however, the market will assign a more subjective value to your neighbors, and i'm thinking possibly a harsher sale price as well...i wouldn't want to live across from that, and i'd imagine other buyers that are paying 200k wouldn't want to either..i wouldn't touch this deal unless it was a steal and i could undercut the lowest comp by 50k..just my opinion..maybe i'm too conservative, but i don't like to lose money :)

There really are endless posibilities of external factors and have nothing to do with the roof.

When depreciation begins to fade, when the external property issues of a maturing area begin to slide, I dumped them and moved on.